A Flash Before the Eyes
by cliosmuse
Summary: A post-Revelations story of the apocalypse. Spoilers through Revelations and very early teasers for Sometimes a Great Notion. *Now complete.*
1. Chapter 1

AN: This was inspired by Aaron Douglas's spoilerish comments about the Final Five Cylons as well as the rumors about season 4.5. It is a Kara/Lee romance, but it's also much more than that. It's a full ensemble piece that explores key questions of the series: what are the Cylons? what is the origin of the Final Five? where did Kara go during Maelstrom? what is the origin of the disaster on Earth? It's a very intricate piece and I think probably will necessitate a good deal of close reading. Each chapter offers heavy foreshadowing for subsequent chapters, and everything weaves together eventually. I hope you enjoy the ride.

Also available at my LiveJournal (see my profile for link).

Standard disclaimers apply.

**A Flash Before the Eyes**

**by cliosmuse  
**

**Chapter 1**

A flash before his eyes, as bright as a supernova and as painful to the retina. He gasped; faltered; threw one hand to his forehead, the other out for support, his eyes squeezed shut tightly.

"Sam? Are you all right?" Tory – to his left.

Samuel T. Anders opened his eyes and was confronted once again by the grey, desolate landscape that surrounded him, surrounded them all. "I... I don't know. Something –"

The flash again. More intense, this time. He fell to his knees in the ash, clutching his head in his hands. Images surrounded him. Not just the explosion, but others as well. A television screen, depicting hundreds of similar blasts around the world. A little girl, eyes turned up toward him, afraid. A blond woman before him. How did she get in here? Her mouth moves rapidly, words indistinguishable through his mental haze. A swing set, charred and ruined, creaking uneasily in the fenced-in park across the street as he runs from the apartment building, girl in his arms, pulled by the woman who still speaks to him with calm purpose but whose words still make little sense. Throngs around him of others, running. And then another blast, louder than before, that sends him flying.

He jerked his eyes open again; gasped. "Sam! Sam! What's wrong?" Tory's voice pulled him into the present. He was on all fours, knees and hands buried in radioactive dust. He pulled himself up into a squat, elbows leaning heavily on his knees. Others had begun to gather around, curiosity a good distraction from devastation, though they kept a safe distance.

"I've been here before. I've been here before."

"What do you mean, Lieutenant Anders?" He looked up after the voice into the face of Laura Roslin. Laura Roslin, the dying leader of the Twelve Colonies, who had led them to – what? This? Ruin? Home?

"I mean – I mean that something's coming back to me. I remember. I remember being here. I remember the war." He looked down at his arms, which mimed the tight grip on that small, blue-eyed child. "I remember my daughter. I remember her dying." His eyes scanned the gazes of those around him, their expressions ranging from terror to calm and everything in between. His eyes settled on the calmest among them, a sea of tranquility behind her glasses (the only thing that revealed her confusion was how tightly she gripped the admiral's hand). "We've all, the five of us, been here before. We just didn't know until now." He paused. "I need to see Kara."

* * *

"Why didn't you tell me?" She wasn't sure quite how long she'd been walking (sometimes running) after silently slipping away, away from that ruined (gleaming) city of skyscrapers and monuments and homes and offices, away from the cluster of Colonial survivors, too consumed by their own grief to notice her departure. What she was sure of was that he was behind her, matching her step for step.

His answer held disappointment, though. "It wasn't my job to tell you. I didn't know."

"You said you were my guide."

"I said you had a destiny. I didn't say that I knew precisely what that was, or how far back it extended. But I didn't need to tell you. You knew. You saw Earth. The smell, the feel of it on your skin. And it was like you'd been there before. Like you'd never left."

She looked back at him, sharply. He shrugged, not needing to explain to her the depth of his knowledge. She sighed and kept walking in silence. Striding forward, with purpose, toward something – something she wouldn't know until she saw. Something she felt growing stronger and stronger the closer she got. "Like I'd never left."

* * *

When he woke up, he was in pain and the girl was gone. He looked across the room from where he sat on a worn and tattered sofa. They were in a coffee shop; the blond woman was sitting at a high counter, scribbling something on a piece of paper with gloved hands. Aside from the gloves, she was dressed in cargo pants and a tank top, her hair pulled back in a tight ponytail. Across her back he saw the straps of a gun holster. "Where is she? Where's my daughter?"

She didn't look up. "I'm sorry, Samuel. She didn't make it."

He choked on a sob. "What?"

"There was another blast. It threw us half a block uptown. You were badly hurt. You've been unconscious for almost a day. I pulled us in here. She died almost immediately." Almost...

"What about my wife?"

The woman sighed. "Manhattan is gone, Samuel. There is no one left alive." She reached her hand to the right of her, snatched something, and tossed it to him. "Eat something." His hand shot up to catch it. (Reflexes intact, I see.) A chocolate-chip muffin.

He looked at the object in his hand. Dropped it to his lap as if burned. Too much. Too much to comprehend at once. He sat up, barely noticing the pain that shot through his abdomen, buried his head in his hands. "No, no, no, no."

And then she was beside him, shaking him violently by his shoulders. "Pull yourself together, Samuel. We've got things to do. We've got people to find. I found you first because I thought you'd be best able to help me. Don't tell me I made a mistake."

He shook his head, his face wet though he hadn't thought he'd been crying. "Found me? Why the fuck would you want to find me? Who are you?"

"I found you, Samuel, because you have a destiny." Her lips played into the smallest of smiles. "And you can call me Starbuck."

"Starbuck? Like in the book?"

She cocked her head at him, as if thinking. "I suppose so." She paused. Grinned, though her gaze was severe. "'I will have no man in my boat who is not afraid of a whale.' Do what I say, Samuel, and you will live a long, long time."

* * *

Tory shook her head rapidly. "This is bullshit. I don't remember anything about this place." She looked around, desperately. "Sam, you're imagining this."

"No, he's not." His uncovered eye was glazed over, as if he was watching something at a great distance. His pupil glowed, as if reflecting some cosmic fire.

* * *

The first thing he remembered thinking was: "Why the fuck did I decide to work in New York?" He had been a beat cop in Minneapolis until his drinking problems caught up with him (perhaps part of the reason he never made detective). Discharged and in disrepute, he found work as a private security guard in an office building downtown. It paid the bills; he still drank. And now that Helen had gone, taking the kids, he drank alone.

What he never could quite figure out was what pushed him to that dark place. Why turn to the bottle? He had a family; he should be satisfied. But night after night, alone in his squad car, the emptiness had seemed to strangle him.

After Helen had left, children in tow, he'd decided to leave. New York City seemed an obvious destination. Despite the expense of the place, he wanted nothing more than to go somewhere where he could disappear into the wallpaper. Saul Tigh was not meant to be a standout.

So the first thing he remembered thinking, when the first brilliant flash met his eyes, as he dove underneath the desk he manned at the U.N. building, was: "Why the fuck did I decide to work in New York?"

The second question he asked came much later, as he wandered around the deserted city in search of some hope, some evidence of life and that the whole world didn't look like this place. When the blond woman and her friend found him, gun in hand, sitting in the middle of Central Park, the question that surged through his mind was: "Why in God's name wasn't I with my family?"

* * *

"What does this mean? What in the gods' names can this mean?" Four miles into her wandering, as night fell, she began to walk faster and faster, more and more deliberately, until at last she found what her senses had been directing her toward. The crack in the windscreen was familiar. The dried blood, now blackened, told a story. The callsign on the side was hers. She touched a hand to the jagged edge where the wing had ripped away from the body of the vessel, then pulled her hand back as if scalded.

"What does it mean? Perhaps it means we can step twice into the same river. Perhaps it means there are second chances. Perhaps it means what you're afraid it means, or perhaps it means something very, very different. But it certainly means you've been here before."

She shook her head violently. "No. No. That –" Gesturing at the sunken form in the cockpit. "That is not me. That can't be me."

Leoben smiled. "It means you never left."


	2. Chapter 2

**by cliosmuse  
**

**Chapter 2**

Starbuck, she called herself, and he recognized the name, not only from a vague notion that there had once been in America a chain of stores by the name (failed, he recalled from a period film, a century prior, during the Second Banking Crisis) but also, and more enduringly, from a novel he'd once been struck by, one he'd read as a high school student long before, written during America's first gasps as a nation, near the time of the country's First Civil War (the Second one had been less bloody, perhaps because the desire for cleavage was by that time more mutual; though the current war hadn't been bloody, either, until now).

His mind wandered as he followed her and the man through the streets of New York (it may have been their now devastating insignificance that drew his thoughts to elementary history lessons). Ash rained from the sky. Bodies were strewn before them in an endless sea. The ground was littered with surprisingly little rubble, besides the people and the ash. As he caught a bit of ash in his hand, he wondered vaguely why he wasn't yet feeling sick. Checked himself for blisters periodically. Pulled absently at what hair he had left, testing for strength. In front of him, the man stumbled slightly, and her hand shot out to steady him with strength and grace. Lightly touching his shoulder she whispered something to him (something in the gesture made him think they might be old friends), and the man shook his bowed head and steadied himself.

He suddenly felt awkward, as if intruding on a private moment. Thoughts of Helen and the kids came unbidden to mind and he struggled to push them away. He cleared his throat harshly. "So, _Starbuck_, why haven't we seen anyone else? There must be other survivors. Lots of them. There are probably whole cities that weren't affected."

"There aren't," she responded, knowingly. "That's why they call it mutual annihilation." The man beside her seemed still unsteady (he clutched his side, where his shirt was filthy with dried blood).

"How the hell would you know? We survived. If we survived, other people did." Please, he thought.

She nodded her head. "A few."

He shook his head, grumbling to himself. God, he needed a drink. "Well how in the hell did you find us?"

"I don't think you'd believe me if I told you."

"Try me."

* * *

In his office at Columbia, Galen Tyrol came to consciousness slowly. The first flash outside his window caused his hair to stand on end, and he knew, _knew_, what it was (oh, God, no, they didn't, the stupid bastards). The sound came a good three seconds later, as sound does, but he knew that even if this explosion was a few miles downtown the next would be closer (or, if not that one, then the next, or the next). Instinct kicked in, but before he had time to crouch under the synthetic fibers of his desk (no metal: metal was a conductor of electricity) the second flash blinded him, the sound immediate.

Now, he struggled to open his eyes. He was sore all over, and his head throbbed. Glass shards were strewn around him and, he had no doubt, were responsible for the dried blood that streaked his arms. He pulled himself up, dusting his hands off carefully to avoid further cuts, and walked to the window (the glass had blown out cleanly; there was not a trace of it left in the frame). Leaning out the window, he was astonished by the efficiency of the destruction. How brilliantly _clean_ it was. Students lay crumpled on blackened grass in Columbia's main courtyard; but buildings, statues, trees stood, slightly blackened but recognizable. A hundred fifty years ago, physicists before him, physicists like Oppenheimer, would never have been able to imagine this, he thought. The amazingly efficient concentration of nuclear energy at the living. (And why am I still here? How am I looking at this? he wondered, but pushed the thought away. The rational part of his mind knew that he must be dying; more slowly than the rest, but dying nonetheless. Though his skin didn't seem burned, he was certain that inside his organs were fixed. Had to be.)

And suddenly it all hit him like a sucker punch to the gut. And Galen Tyrol, professor of physics, youngest department head in university history, Defense Department consultant, later White House adviser, as he looked out into that dead courtyard threw his head back and screamed into desolation.

* * *

It was that scream that brought Tory Foster into the real world. She had arrived in New York only the day before, from the Indian province of Greater China, where she was a vice president of the seventh-largest financial services firm in the world (third largest of Greater China). She had been invited by the dean of Columbia's Business School to speak to her students about wartime banking challenges, and, after much wrangling over visas (because of the aforementioned war), she had finally managed to secure her travel.

It bothered her far less than it perhaps should have to be so far from home when disaster struck. She was unmarried; her parents were dead; the attitudes of her siblings toward her ranged from minor dislike to full-scale loathing. They said they didn't understand her capitulation to the government; what they didn't understand was that to get ahead one had to play the game. Friends likewise were something Tory didn't have to miss. Her colleagues resented her success as she shot ahead of them, a stone's throw from the presidency of the company (and thus from the ear of the President). Tory liked playing games.

What concerned her most about this, the apparent end of the world, was the sudden loss of power that came with it. All she'd worked for, up in smoke. So to speak.

But then she heard the scream, blood-curdling even if faint to her ears. And so the second thing that concerned her was the quality of her footwear. She knew enough about weapons production over the last few frenzied years to know that a blast like the one she'd seen was likely to have left a lingering high-voltage static charge in the objects around her, even in the ground. In an age of fear, most people walked around prepared for such things. Her class of business students – _business students_, for God's sake, they were supposed to be dressed appropriately for _class_, not for the end of the world – all wore heavy combat boots. But not her. She had her pride. When Tory woke up, she thought of her bank account, and her vice presidency, and the ear of the President (which probably didn't exist anymore). But then she heard the scream, and her thoughts about her bank account and her vice presidency fled. Carefully, delicately even, she dragged herself to the first dead body she could find. She slipped off her high heels and on the dead girl's nylon-soled boots. And she stood and began to make her way toward the voice.

* * *

In a church in Brooklyn, a priest knelt before an altar. She wished she could touch the gold crucifix before her, cling to it (was gold conductive? she wasn't sure), but she felt certain that it would be some kind of sin. (Didn't believe in me before much, did you? And now, at the end of the world, you want to cling to me? Faithless child.)

And so she didn't touch it, merely knelt and gazed. And, as she looked at it, Anastasia Dualla wept.


	3. Chapter 3

**by cliosmuse  
**

**Chapter 3**

As hard as he tried, he couldn't remember much. "Just… flashes, Admiral. I'm sorry." He looked around himself, at the planet, darkening with its rotation away from the system's sun. The sunset wasn't warm but cold and grey, like everything else about the planet. "Glimpses, really. A girl, my daughter. A light. Some pain. I can't put it all together. But I know… I know it's real."

The older man sighed deeply. Around him, huddled in the ash (checking every so often their radioactivity badges; still white, thank the gods), sat Anders and Tyrol and Tigh (Caprica close at hand). Farther away, D'Anna, dazed, had fallen to her knees, Gaius near her. Helo and Athena were huddled together under the arches of a dilapidated dome. The man stroked her dark hair.

Tory seemed to make a point of avoiding their tête-à-tête (after insisting, almost to the point of panic, that Sam was "making things up"); she hovered near Baltar and D'Anna. A stone's throw away but well within earshot, his son leaned heavily against a downed stone pillar, arms crossed before him, jaw set tightly. His son's distance was balanced by his – his what? – his Laura's closeness: she sat to his right, her arm looped through his, squeezing protectively. She sensed his anxiety and held more tightly as he closed his eyes; asked the question he feared, wary, resigned. "You're certain Kara was there?"

From outside the ring, Lee's voice: "No. He's not. This is frakking insane, Dad. You know Kara's not one of them. What else does she have to do to prove it to you?"

The old man removed his glasses; rubbed his eyes with weary hands. "Well, for starters, she could be here."

Sam grimaced, glared down at the ground before him. "This isn't a pissing contest, Lee. I know she was there. Tigh knows she was there. Galen knows she was there. Tory – Tory knows, too. She just doesn't want to." He looked up, daggers. "And _you_ know, Lee. You know there's something about her. You – you know."

Tigh's shoulders sagged. He shook his head. "Glimpses. That's right, Bill. That's all I've got. A hand, a city, a color. The explosions." (Beside him, Galen nodded.) "I don't remember _them_, exactly." He gestured to Anders, Tyrol. "I know they remember because I do, so they've got to. But –" A pointed glance at Lee. "I _do_ remember _her_. Clear as anything else in this frakking excuse for a life." Pounding a first angrily into the grey earth: "I just wish I could gods-damned put it all together. I wish I could get it to make sense."

A quiet voice. "We need to find her." Lee again.

"That's right." Sam nodded slowly. "She could make it make sense. I feel – I'm sure – she understands this better than we do."

"No." He kicked the earth, shaking his head. "That's not what I mean. I mean it's getting dark. She shouldn't be out there, by herself. She needs to come home." Ignoring his mind that screamed at him: _she is home_.

Sam laughed mirthlessly. "If you haven't noticed, Lee, I don't think she's by herself. Someone else is missing. Someone I should have killed on the Demetrius when I had the chance." He shook his head. "Or maybe not. I just don't understand any of it." Behind him, Lee's fists clenched.

His father pushed himself to his feet. "She's a big girl, Lee. Perhaps now is the time just to let her be." He sighed. Dusted his hands on his heavy pants, then breathed into them, cupped, as he fought against the cold. "It's time for us to go back to Galactica. Regroup. I think we all have a lot of thinking to do. I don't know that any of us has a clear enough head right now to figure out what our next steps should be."

"Sir –" Lee stood up straight, walked briskly over to where his father stood. "We can't just leave her. There's… there's nothing out there."

He reached out, tentatively, and put a hand on his son's shoulder. "We're not, Lee. I'll send Athena and Helo to survey the area as best they can before we lose the light. We'll leave a manned Raptor on the surface. Crew to rotate out every four hours." A pause. A look of worry, more for his son than for Kara. "She knows what she's doing. She always has."

A cough behind him. Tyrol. "Sir, I don't know about the others, but tomorrow I'd like to start scouting that city. Maybe it will bring something back. Maybe something important."

He nodded. "We don't have a better place to be. If this is Earth, we should at least try to understand what happened to it."

* * *

They were loaded back onto the Raptors ten at a time. Eyes downcast, faces drawn. Behind them a grey world stretched out (shrouded slowly in darkness as it turned its face away from its star).

They spoke in hushed voices, some already planning their next trip to the surface, some swearing never to come again (one would hope Gaius Baltar felt an appropriate degree of shame when he heard the tremor in those voices).

When Lee saw his ex-wife, standing at the hatch of the Raptor, looking out, he had a sense of déjà vu: another surface, another dashed dream. This time, at least, he didn't need to feign happiness. "So I guess that's it, isn't it." He stood before her, below her (so like before). Stuffed his hands in his pockets, rocking on his feet. "Everything for nothing." Small talk was not his strong suit.

She started. Tore her gaze away from the landscape (cityscape behind) and toward him, her face a mask of anguish. Then turned back toward the city as it faded into the darkness. Her eyes looked old. "Yes," she whispered. "I guess you're right." A beat, filled with significance. "Everything for nothing." Such is life. Everything for nothing.

The moment turned awkward. He smiled, nodded quickly, turned on his heel, and tried to make his way to the appropriate transport (forgetting on which ship he was currently bunked; so much had changed; he had hoped when _she_ came back that life might feel more normal, but he felt now with certainty that any sense of normalcy he'd lulled himself into feeling since the end of the worlds had been simply an illusion all along).

As they boarded the transports, shoulders sagging, most tried not to look back at the scene behind them. With carefully averted gazes, they ducked into the waiting ships. But as the city faded from view, Anastasia "Dee" Dualla strained her eyes not to lose it. Most averted their eyes for fear of what was to come. Dee alone continued to stare, terrified by the certainty that she was soon to find what once had been.

As she ducked her head finally into the Raptor, she heard (faintly) Athena's voice: "I've flown a few-mile radius. There's a bonfire. It might be her."

A sigh. A gruff voice, that of her former father-in-law, responded. "We'll leave her to herself. She'll come back in her own time."

Squeezing her eyes shut, Dee slumped to the floor of the Raptor with the other passengers and prepared herself to return to Galactica: to the life that she once knew.

* * *

The Cylon stood watching her (his Kara) as she watched the Viper burn. She sat in the ash, elbows leaning on bent knees, gaze unwavering.

They hadn't spoken in several hours. She'd led him to the plane. He knew she would. (Or to something; he didn't know what had become of her before she'd been reborn.) She'd looked over the bird, mechanically. She'd climbed into the cockpit and patted down the corpse inside just as mechanically, though he couldn't tell from the ground precisely what she found that caused her to back away in fright, tripping over the edge of the cockpit and stumbling down the wing. (Couldn't tell but suspected a certain silver ring to be the culprit.) And he was unsurprised when, after retching into the ashen earth she'd torn through her pockets for a match and thrown it, lit, into the fuel tank (though given that it must have been running on bingo fuel by the end, he was a bit surprised that it burned).

Because he _knew_ her. Knew her better than she knew herself, he suspected, because he knew what she'd _seen_. Knew what she _was_. Understood the hybrid's calls. She was an angel, blazing with the light of God.

What did surprise him was when she finally spoke. "I shouldn't have brought them here. This was a mistake."

"What did I tell you when we first met, Kara? I told Samuel T. Anders" (he punctuated the name) "as well." She looked at him sharply. "What is the most basic article of faith, Kara? This is not all that we are. A part of me swims in the stream but in truth, I'm standing on the shore; the current never takes me downstream."

"So what?" A bitter laugh, her hand waving between herself and the burning body in the plane. "This is me in the stream and on the shore? No…." She shook her head. "But, you know, that's the bigger problem." Her voice growing higher, frenzied. "I don't know where here is." A hitched breath, a half sob. "I don't have anything to hold onto."

"You will." He moved to stand behind her; crouched and pulled her to him (a flash: her painting on the Demetrius). She sank into him, boneless. "Tell me, Starbuck. Tell me what you remember."


	4. Chapter 4

**A Flash Before the Eyes**

**by cliosmuse  
**

**Chapter 4**

And so she did tell him, as Leoben held her (not gently but as if to restrain her, to protect her from her own mind). And as she spoke – talked and talked, it kept coming out – she surprised herself. (Though she did not surprise him.) They were things she didn't know, shouldn't know. And yet she said them.

* * *

I don't remember the crash. But I remember waking up. I woke up in the cockpit, and it was dark. Not space-dark, not vacuum-dark. It was dark in a way that you know it will get light again. And that made me feel relief.

And what I noticed most was the emptiness. Not around me – there were trees, I could hear traffic, I could see glimmers of light in the distance – but here. [She pointed.] In my mind. It was like I didn't know where I was, or what I was, or why I was. [He nodded as if this made all the sense in the world.] And I saw so cold, and scared.

I was hurt. My head throbbed. The controls seemed confusing, like I'd never seen them before. I finally got the screen up and pulled myself out of the bird and dropped down, but I'd jammed my knee again and that hurt like a mother-frakker. [He cringed at the crude turn of phrase.]

And so I walked away, and all I knew was that there was someplace I needed to be. Something I needed to do. So I limped away from the bird – got about a mile away, over the highway. Good thing it was dark; no one saw me leaving the Viper. Her wing was off, and her screen was cracked, and even though I didn't really _remember_ her, it hurt to see her that way. (Gods know how I survived that crash. I still don't.)

Across the highway, there was this – this all-night store. I walked in, and the couple of kids who were there buying stogies and ambrosia just stared, _stared_. [A pause.]

I went to the counter, and there was this little old man behind it. I kept thinking that he reminded me of someone, but I couldn't figure it out. I think maybe it was President Adar. [She snorted a laugh.] That dirty old bastard. And he kept staring, and looking away, and staring again. Like he had something to be suspicious of. Like I was going to rob him. And then he said something. A question, I think. I couldn't understand. I told him that – that I couldn't understand. And then he said, kind of sneered, "You come into my shop and you can't even speak American?" And that, somehow – somehow I got that. And when I asked him how to get to the nearest city he rolled his eyes at me but somehow – he – somehow he understood that. I can't explain it. It doesn't make sense.

So I waited at the on-ramp where he told me the trucks sometimes stopped, and a little before dawn I got a ride. This guy knew how to leer – looked like he was about to try to cop a feel, but I gave him a glimpse of my gun and there weren't any more problems. [His arms tightened around her instinctively. Not that he was so very different, really. He knew about wanting her. But he liked to think his wanting was more spiritual.] In my mind was an address, I don't know how I knew. But I told him, and he told me he could get me close.

As we drove into the city it seemed so _different_ to what I knew – except that I didn't know what I knew, does that make sense? It was just different. Older. Dirtier.

[He nodded, as he'd been doing each time she craned her neck back to him for affirmation. His gaze never wavered from her profile. Her gaze rarely wavered from her clasped hands, except when she asked him questions like this one.]

But the sky was turning from pink to blue, and the clouds were white, and I felt absolute _joy_ at that, joy like I never feel, haven't felt since…. [A protracted pause.] Well, I don't know.

He dropped me off as close as his route took him to the address I needed. Told me I'd find a map in the subterranean transport, which I did. And by nine in the morning I was there. Shivering – still so cold, it was the time of year they called Fall. And it was a church, which I didn't mind (thanked the gods for, really). Because I wanted to pray.

* * *

And pray Kara did, for hours. Many did, here, on Friday morning after Mass. But when Ana, making her way to the confessional, saw the woman kneeled before the altar (as so many did), her first instinct was to turn around and run. She shook her head, trying to rid herself of the eerie feeling, like déjà vu. It was nonsense; she'd never seen the woman before, and though her combat-like attire was odd (though not the boots; so many wore them these days), she didn't seem a threat.

And so Ana locked herself into the confessional and prepared to hear the sins of her people. Hoped the woman would not come to her and cursed herself for that, a sin against God.

The door of the other side of the confessional opened. Someone sat down, sighed heavily. Leaned a forehead against the barrier.

Her nerves were on fire. She was more frightened than she'd felt since her country had fallen (it hadn't been so long; this war felt older than it was). "Do you have something you'd like to confess?"

At first, nothing. Then: "I think I have too much to confess. But that's not why I'm here."

Fear, again. Anastasia pushed it down. "Then why have you come?"

"I was told to come see you, Anastasia."

Her heart raced. "I doubt that's possible. I've only been here a short while. Until last month, I was in a church in South Africa. And then, when –" She choked. "Then I came here."

"It doesn't matter. It doesn't matter. I _was_ told to come see you."

Her anxiety was, if anything, heightened. She reached her hands toward the grate, looped her fingers into the gaps and clutched tightly. Her voice was high. "Told by whom?"

"I don't know. I can't explain it. I just knew."

Ana swallowed, hard. Leaned back, calming herself. "Then perhaps you were told by God, my child. He wants you to confess your sins."

She laughed harshly. "I don't think that you believe that." A beat. "Where should I start?" Another. And then, in a rush: "I know something I shouldn't. And I think I have a duty to act. But I'm afraid. I don't want the role I think I've been assigned."

Relieved, Ana sank into the familiar rhythm of confession. "Fear is not a sin. Though failing to act when it is necessary because of fear might be. Sometimes it takes great strength to embrace our calling."

Faintly, she could see the silhouette through the grate cock its head. "And sometimes we're afraid because we're right to be. Because we're wrong."

Silence. She didn't know how to respond. Yes, she'd probably been wrong about a great many things in her life. But there was no way, absolutely no way, that this strange woman in her army fatigues could know that, could know anything about her.

And then, as if reading her mind: "I know something about you, Anastasia Dualla. I know something about you. You, Ana. You are the Fifth. And you're going to betray me."

And without another word, before Dualla could regain her composure, the woman was gone.

* * *

Kara let out a shuddering breath. "I don't understand. I don't understand what I am. If I were a Cylon – at least it would be _something_. Something I could hold on to. As it is, I'm – what? A devil? A ghost? A lie?" She let out a loud, hiccuping half-sob, a painful sound, and shook her head. "Can we go now? I don't want to be here. I don't want to think about this any more. I just can't. It's too much for me."

Suddenly he knew – without her saying, he just _knew_ – how the story ended. How they could have found her body in the Viper even though she said she abandoned it. Why what she'd seen in the plane had sent her reeling. Why it made her remember. The pieces in the middle could wait for another time, but the end he _knew_, because he knew her.

After it was all over – after the end of the world – she made her way back to her downed craft. It would have taken time. The distance wasn't too far, probably, but the tunnel she'd have had to walk through would have been dark and hard to navigate, littered with bodies and cars.

The entire park would have been cordoned off around the Viper. Not surprising that the people of Earth would be confused, frightened by it. Amazing, really, that she herself had been unnoticed to begin with. (Or perhaps not so amazing, he thought. Destiny was a funny thing.)

He imagined her walking around it. Stroking it from nose to tail. In his mind, she cried tears no one would ever see. And then she hoisted herself up onto the wing, lowered herself into the cockpit. Gave one last look around the devastated landscape (and, a few miles in the distance, the City). Pulled out her gun. Put it into her mouth. And saying a prayer to her gods, her trickster gods, she pulled the trigger.

She didn't have to tell him. All this has happened before, and all will happen again.


	5. Chapter 5

**A Flash Before the Eyes**

**by cliosmuse  
**

**Chapter 5**

In the end, he went back to Joe's. Probably shouldn't have been there; he was a civilian now, after all. In the chaos of the return from the surface, though, no one noticed who went where, and drinking was no great shakes.

When she first came back, his father had posed a question to him. "What should I believe? Should I believe my heart or my eyes?" His answer had been oblique: a swift dismissal and then a question of his own: "What if Zak had come back to us in that Viper," he'd asked. "If my brother had climbed out of that cockpit would it matter if he were a Cylon? If he always had been? When all's said and done, would that change how we really feel about him?" He'd thrown the question out casually, as if he'd known – been positive of – his own answer. (In the back of his mind, he could hear his grandfather's voice: "Be good, but not too good." A good lawyer a liar makes.) In part, he felt sure, it had been Lee's certainty that had led his father to send Kara away in the Demetrius.

But what now? When he'd made his bluff, the question had been hypothetical. In his mind, she wasn't a Cylon. Because he knew her.

Taking another swig of ambrosia (he was, tonight, paying for the good stuff, the stock Joe kept under the bar), he thought back to their first meeting, to his brother's drunken introduction of his new girl at a bar so much like this one. A flirty smile, a gaze held too long, the brush of her fingers against his regulation slacks. He'd blushed, stammered. She'd laughed, too loudly. As Zak made his way back from the head, she'd elbowed him almost violently in mockery. Told Zak how stupidly gullible his older brother was. Should've seen the look on your face, _Apollo_. His face reddened more. A bitch. A tease. But he was taken by her. (At the dance, much later, waiting for their bout, he'd strained to hear her conversation with Athena as Dee spoke in his other ear. "He's making the same mistakes as the day he met me," she'd told her. Bitch. Tease.)

And that was their whole relationship. She teased him, led him on mercilessly, and he ate it up like a puppy kicked one too many times and all the more desperate to please the abusive master. Something inside him knew that it wasn't all a lie, couldn't have been. She craved what he had to offer – stability, faith, love – even as she was too wounded to accept it. She hurt herself, repeatedly, as punishment for some unnamable sin. But her aim was wild, and there were peripheral casualties: rationalizing her response didn't lessen its impact.

After Zak's death, and they, both so sore from it all, had looked to one another, briefly, for solace. And gods if he didn't want her still, even with his brother fresh under the ground. And gods if she hadn't pulled him out to a bar, tantalized him with her brazenness and her pain, with her batted lashes and her too-loud laugh, only to get drunk and go home with some major from – somewhere. "I don't owe you anything," she'd reminded him angrily when the exact same thing happened yet again, in a different world. And he cursed himself for demonstrating his weakness in calling her on it. Another time, when he'd been stupid enough to suggest that all of this meant something: "There is no us, all right? There is nothing here. Do you get that? Nothing." And in his bitter comment – "you're fine with the dead guys" – too much revealed, yet again. But she'd always beat him, in love and triad. He just couldn't keep his cards to his chest.

A tap on his shoulder. "Join you?"

He looked to his left, reflexes off because of the alcohol. Squinted a bit to make out the other man. "Well I guess it would only be appropriate. I was just thinking about your wife."

Sam laughed, humorlessly, and gestured to Lee's drink. "Yeah. She'll do that to you."

An uneasy silence. They'd made their peace, to a large degree, after she had died. Now that she was back, there had been increasing unease between them. But there were things he needed to know. "So, you're sure?"

A beat. "Yeah I'm sure. I can't explain what happened. When the four of us realized what we were, there weren't, you know, memories associated with that. We knew that we were being directed by something, and that we'd all realized it at once. And so it stood to reason that we were Cylons. But _this_ – these are _memories_. As real as any other memory in my life. It's not near clear, but I can remember her, coming to me. Finding me. Saving me." A laugh. "I guess she's done that a lot."

Lee lowered his head, scrubbing his hands over his face.

"Listen, Lee. Does this really change things for you?"

He laughed. "You know, that's kind of just what I was asking myself. And I don't know that I know the answer."

Beside him, he could hear Sam sigh. He was staring into his glass. "You know, in the grand scheme, I don't know what this means. I don't know what her bringing us to this planet means, or why. But in the short-term… knowing this about her helps me." He laughed harshly. "When she first came back, I found her staring at her photograph. And I told her that if she were a Cylon, she'd been one from the beginning, and that I'd love her no matter what. And she told me that if I were a Cylon, she'd put a bullet between my eyes."

Lee couldn't help but laugh. "That's comforting."

Sam smiled and shook his head. "That's Kara. But what I mean is…." A pause. "Kara and I have never had a great relationship. And I know I don't make her happy. I've tried – I've tried to be there for her, to listen to her. And I get punished for trying. And then we try again, and we frak it up again. We don't work. Because – and this is the painful thing, the thing that it's taken me too long to come to terms with – because she doesn't love me enough to let me near her. But…." He paused. "I guess knowing this about her makes me feel better, because it's proof that there was something _real_ there. That maybe we misread that and tried to make it something it wasn't, but that that doesn't mean that we're not connected in some very important way. I guess I'm trying to take comfort from that. Right now, now that we've reached the end of the universe, it's about all I have." His face was drawn; he looked tired, resigned.

Lee was quiet. Spoke, when he did, carefully. "So you and Kara… you're…."

"Over? Yeah, I think so. We've been over for a long time." A pointed glance. "But you know that as well as anyone. You've always been right there, ready to step in at a moment's notice."

"Sam, I –"

He put a hand on his shoulder. "No. Listen, I don't blame you. I know her well enough not to blame you. I mean, I'm not exactly giving you my blessing. But I don't blame you." A pause. "Listen, man, I'm gonna go hit my rack. Long day tomorrow, scouting that city. You should come. If you want."

An absent nod, and Sam was gone. And he was left with his thoughts.

* * *

Much, much later, trying to sleep off his alcohol in the guest quarters on Galactica, dreaming about his mother, his brother, and the end of the worlds (the first such dreams he'd had in a long, long time), he was pulled from his haze by a sharp rap at the door. (A glance at the clock showed 0330.) He tried to muffle it, pulled a pillow over his head; but his visitor didn't desist.

He hit the lights and stumbled to the door, bleary-eyed. (Who to expect? His father? Dee? Who knew he was in guest quarters? Not many people. Joe had discreetly called the admiral when it got too late for Lee to get back to his ship. When the admiral had found him, though he'd clearly been put out he hadn't chastised, merely put an arm around his waist and supported his drunken weight on the walk to these quarters. "It will be all right, son," were his only words before he left.)

The look on her face when he opened the hatch was one he'd only seen a handful of times. When she'd apologized to him, after their fight about Baltar. When he'd kissed her in the brig. It was rare for Starbuck to look unsure of herself. She hid grief and self-doubt well behind a wall of bluster.

He closed his eyes. Made sure he wasn't imagining her. "How'd you find me?"

"I have my ways. Can I come in?"

He blinked. "It's –. Kara, it's almost 0400."

"Can I come in?" She walked in after him and then – like déjà vu, all this has happened before – with that same look of pain and uncertainty, "Lee –" And he couldn't help himself, but turned back toward her, swiftly and kissed her, hungrily, like he needed her to breathe. Tears on her cheeks.

Afterward, gasping, reverent, he touched her face in the dark. "What are you?"

"I'm Kara," she replied simply. And, for tonight, that was enough.

In the morning, when he awoke, she was gone.

* * *

So, Leoben asked later, when she met him to go back to the surface. Did it feel the same?

It felt like goodbye, she responded.


	6. Chapter 6

**A Flash Before the Eyes**

**by cliosmuse  
**

**Chapter 6**

Five names, written on card stock, already tattered, folded and refolded a hundred times since she had scrawled the details down a few hours earlier (less to aid her memory than to demonstrate their reality). Five names and five locations. Anastasia Dualla. She'd found her first at the Sacred Heart Church, Brooklyn, New York and would find her again, once it was over, at Battery Park. Samuel Anders. She'd find him in an apartment in the East Village, near the university. Saul Tigh. Worked at the United Nations Headquarters, East 42nd Street, Manhattan, but she'd find him in Central Park, near the zoo, thinking about how much his children might have liked someday to visit the City. Victoria Foster she'd find with Galen Tyrol, both at Columbia.

She didn't know how she knew these things; details of her own life seemed hazy at best. They came in flickers that she felt more than saw (pain coursing through swollen hands; the rough feel of sand against her naked back). She'd finally, after a morning wandering around the teeming city, remembered her own name, long after she knew theirs. (Hers was Starbuck.) And she was remembering things about this city, this space; but the memories seemed distant, as if not her own.

When the names came to her mind, the first thing that occurred to her was that they might know who she was, why she was there. Perhaps they'd known her before the crash, before she'd lost her memory; perhaps they could direct her home. But then when she'd confronted Dualla that morning, it was as though the encounter had been ripped from her control. She'd felt at the time a powerful sense of _knowing_ – not only of the woman (though she did know her, and very well) but of her purpose as well.

And so, fearful but also with some sense of direction, she'd spent the rest of the morning making her way toward the home of Sam Anders, to watch and to wait but also with the strange feeling that he was _safe_.

Across the street from his building, she'd cursed herself. _How the hell could I possibly know which one he is?_ And yet (of course?) she had known the moment he'd stepped out of the old brick building, small pigtailed girl in tow. He'd leaned down to speak to her periodically; she'd giggled at his secret fatherly nothings. When she had gotten tired, he'd lifted her onto his back and carried her.

After a few blocks, the pair ducked into a small shop. Starbuck paused; pulled back, wary of being seen. When he came out, the girl was still on his shoulders, but now she held a bouquet of long-stemmed flowers. She smiled still, but Anders's eyes now glistened slightly. A hand flew to a cheek, as if to wipe away the offending tear. And they walked together through the automatic doors at the main entrance of the hospital next door.

Starbuck had been taken aback; she reeled back so quickly that she knocked into a street vendor whose curses followed her as she ran down the street. She felt like an intruder, a voyeur; but at the same time she knew her presence was important. And so she returned to his street and waited for the blast.

Now, two days later, a very different Sam Anders followed her through the ruined streets of Manhattan. This was a Sam Anders who had lost. Starbuck knew about loss. With the first blast, her memory of her life came rushing back to her, and it was as though she experienced the pain and the joy (more pain than joy) of a lifetime in an instant. But she didn't know what to say to him, how to express her sympathy over his loss of his child (I've been there, I have the scars) and his wife (you've lost her twice, now; I'm glad this one made you happy). And so it was in part a relief when he was the first to speak.

"You remind me of my wife."

She cocked her head to the side. "I do?"

He nodded emphatically as he swiped a hand to his cheek to wipe away another tear. "Yes. So much. She was blond, like you. Strong." He laughed a little past his grief (clutching his side against the pain there). "And bossy. Always telling me I needed to work harder, that I could be the best."

"What did you do?"

He shrugged. "This and that."

She smiled. "So she wanted you to be the best at this and that, is that right?"

He grinned and shook his head. "No. You got me. No. She wanted me to be the best at what I do. I am… I _was_ a musician. Saxophone. Never made much money, but she always thought I could be something. I brought in money by prize fighting. She thought I could be the best at that, too."

"Were you?"

He grinned. "Probably no Jack Johnson, but I wasn't bad. I won a few fights in my time. Better than I was on the saxophone, anyway."

"You'll have to take a look at my left hook. I think it needs some work." A pause. "What was wrong with her?"

He blinked rapidly (probably, she thought, surprised that she knew; but then again, he was probably surprised by her presence at all). "Nothing, until –. An accident. She was in a taxi, and –" He stopped. "She never regained consciousness. I guess it doesn't matter, now."

She took a deep breath. "It still matters. It will always matter."

They found Saul Tigh where she said they would, on a bench in front of the elephant habitat (elephants dead inside), staring at the unopened bottle of whiskey clutched in his hand. He grumbled under his breath but finally followed them. ("S'pose it beats sitting here," he intoned.) And that was how, a scant twenty-four hours after the first of the blasts, the three of them found themselves on the grounds of Columbia University, looking for Galen Tyrol and Tory Foster.

* * *

The scream was primeval. It ripped from Galen Tyrol's throat violently as he threw his head back and looked to the sky, knuckles white with his grip on the empty window frame. He screamed and screamed until his voice was nearly gone, striving to break the stillness, daring the desolation around him to be a dream. And when his voice was spent, he looked still into the sky and asked a question he hadn't asked since he was a boy. _God? Are you there?_ And then:_ Am I alone?_

Closing his eyes, he leaned his head down and sighed, uncertain of precisely what to do next. When he opened his eyes his second question was answered in an instant as a pair of dark eyes stared back at him from the ground below. "_You're_ not alone," (voice dripping with sarcasm). "But _we_ may be."

Tyrol didn't believe in coincidence. He was a scientist, and as such, he looked into the chaos of the universe with the intention of finding in it order. He knew that the electric charge generated by the series of blasts should have killed everything in the city. And yet, here he was, and he wasn't alone. His mind raced. _What about us was different?_

"Don't just talk to yourself, talk to _me_, for God's sake."

He had the sense to look apologetic. "Sorry. Just thinking."

"Well, can I at least come up there?"

He shook his head, distracted. "No. I'll come to you." A pause. "Those boots you're wearing – were you wearing them when the blast happened?"

"No. And the girl who was wearing them is dead now."

He nodded quickly, disappeared from the window, and within a minute was beside her, having donned a flack jacket and black gloves. The boots he wore resembled hers. (He wasn't sure quite why he bothered; he hadn't been wearing any of it at the time, and yet here he was.) In silence and awe he walked toward the center of campus; not having any choice, she followed, trying to get his attention from behind. On the ground the death around him seemed more immediate than it had from his window. At least a hundred bodies lay scattered around the grounds, blackened. The air smelled like burnt rubber.

He had finally shaken himself from his reverie and was just about to introduce himself to the woman before him when he caught movement out of the corner of his eye, from around the corner of the huge domed library that was Columbia's centerpiece. He threw an arm around the woman and pulled her back slightly (she shook him off, annoyed). From behind the huge building emerged three forms, one of whom strode purposefully toward him until she stood right before him, hands on her hips, bouncing blond ponytail belying the severity of her expression. "Tyrol and Tory. It's good to see you. Believe me, we've got our work cut out for us."


	7. Chapter 7

**A Flash Before the Eyes**

**by cliosmuse  
**

**Chapter 7**

"I can't help thinking this is all my fault. If it weren't for that stupid prophesy. To think I believed all this crap about being the dying leader."

Adama held Laura (his Laura) on the couch in his quarters. The tips of the printed scarf that she'd used to hide her bare scalp brushed his cheek as he pulled her closer to him. Neither of them had slept at all since returning from the surface. He'd left her side once, briefly, to go escort his son from Joe's to guest quarters. And now at 0430, he was still too keyed up to sleep. He imagined much of the ship was in the same state. He sighed. "It's not just your fault. It's all of ours." He tried to smile. "You _are_ talking to main culprit, after all. The man who set our sights on Earth to begin with, if you remember."

She turned her head slightly. "Oh, you dear, sweet man. Trying to make me laugh when all I want to do is cry." She paused. "It's ironic that some things only seem to come together when everything else falls apart." He squeezed her tightly at that; greater than his devastation about Earth was his grief about her illness. Was it wrong of him to prioritize, even if silently, a single life above all others? "No, what you did was _right_. What you did was right precisely because you didn't think it existed. It was a goal that could never arrive. As you said, it kept us trying. But what when that final goal has arrived and it – melts into air?"

His voice held a steely determination that he didn't feel but felt the need to convey to her anyway: "Then we find another one."

They sat in silence for – what? Minutes? Hours? He wished he could sit like this with her for the rest of his life. And then she broke it.

"What about Kara?"

The other object of his grief. Kara, who had been returned to him from the dead. And now she was – what? A Cylon? Tigh, Anders, and Tyrol all remembered her, distinctly, from Earth's disaster. He knew that she was the Fifth, but it was a knowledge he didn't want. It was as if, as soon as she'd been given back to him by some miracle, she'd been ripped away. He supposed he shouldn't be surprised. So little seemed right in his life (except the woman in his arms, who was being taken if not all at once then slowly and even more painfully).

"I don't know, Laura."

The use of her name suggested to her it wasn't a topic he was comfortable with. She pushed further (as she suspected no one else would dare to with him). "I know you've been thinking about it."

"To be honest, it's all I've been trying not to think about. Well, one of a couple things I've been trying not to think about."

"You're going to have to think about both of those things, soon."

He sucked in a breath. Spoke rapidly. "I can't lose you both. Not at once." His voice cracked. "Not at all."

She didn't deny it. Didn't pretend it wasn't going to happen. It wouldn't help him to perpetuate fantasies, lies. And it wouldn't push him into honest territory. Instead, she stayed silent.

"She was my daughter, Laura. She was the daughter I didn't have. I looked at her, and I felt all of the pain and the pride that comes with fatherhood. I don't know quite where it came from. Probably, to begin with, as a meager attempt to make up for what I wasn't to Zak by giving that to her." Pause. "But she's not Zak, and I haven't been making up for anything for a long time. My feelings about her, they're just for her. They have nothing to do with my sons. Not Zak, not even Lee. Not now." He swallowed. "When Saul came to me, and told me what he was – it felt like my life had been a lie. This man I'd worked beside, served beside, my friend. But this… this tells me that what's in my heart has been a lie. Did she know all the time? Did she manipulate me? Did she just find out?" His voice grew louder. "I _loved_ her. And my love was betrayed. I'm ripped apart."

They sat in silence for a moment, him in his grief, her in her thoughts. "What if… what if it didn't mean it had to be a lie? What if they _are_ like us, after all?"

"You know they're not." A beat. "She led us here, after all."

A knock on the door. He sighed and disentangled himself from her, pulling his open uniform closed, buttoning it. Slowly he stood and walked deliberately toward the hatch.

As it swung aside, he was greeted by Dee's large, scared eyes. "There's something I need to tell you, sir. It's about Kara."

* * *

The Cylon followed Starbuck around the Raptor as she performed her pre-flight visual inspection. She shook her head. "Nope. Don't even think about it. This is where our journey ends, partner. Go back to your little Cylon friends. From hereon out, I'm on my own."

"The hell you are." Both of their heads whipped around at the steely voice of Lee Adama. Starbuck, he noted, looked indignant. It radiated off her in waves. (The Cylon, on the other hand, had the good grace to look embarrassed.)

She pursed her lips and shook her head. "Apollo, I don't know where you think –"

His eyes blazed; his hand whipped out and gripped her forearm, and he pulled her (not quite kicking and screaming) to an isolated corner of the hangar. (The eyes of those unlucky enough to be on duty at the crack of dawn peered at them with interest, but their ears picked up only hushed, angry tones.) "Don't you frakking _Apollo_ me, Kara. You owe me more than that." The glint in his eye had somewhat transformed; where there had been anger, there was now a silent plea.

She sighed and lowered her head; her voice was harsh. "I owe you a lot I'm never going to be able to make good on, Lee. And I'm sorry. But that's just the way it is."

Anger again; his voice rose sharply in volume: "No! I refuse to accept that. You don't just get to frakking walk out on me, on us, like that. Not again. Never again, Kara."

His voice too loud in the huge room. The echo resounded, and her eyes moved from side to side nervously. "Lee, please lower your voice."

He pushed her against the wall of the hangar, his hands splayed against the wall, one on either side of her head. He hovered over her. But he lowered his voice. "I don't frakking care who hears me. I'm with you, Kara. Like it or not, I'm with you. You're not going anywhere without me."

Her eyes darted from side to side; her face looked pained and desperate. She was looking for an escape. "What about the Quorum?"

"Frak the Quorum. Damn it Kara, why can't you just let me in?"

"Lee, is it so absurd that I might be terrified that you won't like what you find?"

"Yes! Yes, it is! I _love_ you, Kara."

"You love somebody, Lee. But I'm not sure it's me."

His arms dropped to his sides. Defeat was in his eyes. "Why is it so hard for you to be loved?" He paused, tilted his head up slightly, eyes turned upward, as if thinking over his next words. "Do you remember when I told you that I understood about destiny? I think I misunderstood then. It wasn't working with the Quorum or something as insignificant as that that was my destiny. It was this whole journey. Because that led us here. And from here, I can protect you. Support you. Go down to that gods-awful ruin of a planet and help you find what you need to find. That –" His eyes dropped to meet hers. "_That_, Kara. _That's_ my destiny."

Later, when reflecting on that moment, he would find the timing ironic – that he had just been talking about that time in the brig, just been reflecting upon her presence there. There would, after all, be a number of similar brig-visits in their future. At the time, though, in the chaos as the marines rushed into the hangar, pushed him to one side, shackled Starbuck, and led her away (she threw pained, desperate glances back at him) – as his father watched from a rafter high above, the very spot from which he had not so long ago overseen her return from the dead – Lee Adama found very little to laugh at.


	8. Chapter 8

**A Flash Before the Eyes**

**by cliosmuse  
**

**Chapter 8  
**

Saul Tigh had broken his fast. He sat slumped in one of the plush red velvet seats at the back of a tiered lecture hall on the Columbia University campus (the only lecture hall they could find that was, apparently, unoccupied during the blasts; death was not present here). He clutched a bottle of whiskey, now half-empty, in his hand. Every few seconds, he idly touched a finger to the metal back of the chair in front of him – saw a spark, felt a slight tingling in his scalp, but that was all. Now and again he offered the bottle to Anders, sitting beside him, who took it on occasion. Tory paced back and forth nervously in the aisle to their right.

He gestured with his chin below them, toward the front of the lecture hall, where Starbuck and Tyrol were in the midst of a heated discussion. Their voices were too low to be overheard. "What do you figure those two are talking about?"

Anders glanced over at the man, feeling a pang of sadness for him. (_At least I know where my family is_.) "Beats me. Coming up with a plan? I don't know why it gets left up to them, exactly."

Tigh lowered his voice and spoke in slurred conspiratorial tones. "The girl. You were with her before any of us. A little off, isn't she?"

Anders glared at him. He felt connected to her and protective of her even as she scared him. "I don't know. But at least she's trying to _do_ something, which is more than I can say for _you_."

Tigh nodded at him appreciatively, as though the younger man had just scored a particularly impressive point in a game he didn't know he was playing. And indeed: "Touché." A pause. "But people don't just know the things she thinks she knows," he slurred in his gruff voice. "Jesus, I've never seen her before in my life and she finds me and says she fucking _knew_ I'd be in the middle of Central Goddamned Park?"

"Yeah, well, people don't just survive the end of the world unscathed, either, pal. But here we are." He folded his arms across his chest and slouched more deeply into the chair, knees bumping the row in front of him. "And could you please stop poking that goddamned chair?"

Tigh shrugged. "Just seeing what happens."

Their heads all shot up as Galen, now disengaged from his conversation with Starbuck, walked up the tiered rows of seats toward them. Starbuck stood looking away from them, eyes drawn out the side windows toward the dying light. When he reached their level, Tyrol spoke. "Okay, guys. She thinks –." He looked back over his shoulder at her and shook his head in frustration. "I guess we have a plan."

Tigh laughed bitterly. Barked: "A plan!" Shook his head. "So, Doc. Mind telling us how we're all here?"

The professor shrugged. "I… I don't precisely know. But I do know that species find ways to survive. Nature finds ways for species to survive. So that's what we're going to do. Survive."

Saul shook his head drunkenly, gesturing inarticulately. "No, no, no. Go back a minute. Species find ways to survive. What _precisely_ do you mean by that, Doc? Survival of the fittest? Evolution? Is that what you mean, Doc?" That bitter laugh again, and then: "Cause I can tell you right now, if that's the case, this goddamned planet sure as hell picked the wrong man in me."

Galen ignored him. His face looked determined, confused, and sad at once. "There's a research facility that we need to make our way to. An aerospace research facility, where I was a head researcher. It's located in Brooklyn, underneath Prospect Park. We need to go there, but probably not until tomorrow. Right now, we're losing light." He glanced behind him, as if trying to gauge the blond woman's reaction to his words. Her gaze hadn't wavered at all from the window. She didn't seem to be paying any attention at all, but Sam Anders thought he caught a faint furrow in her eyebrows. "I guess we need to find somewhere to sleep now. I'd suggest the dorms, but I don't know that any of us want to deal with – _what we'd find_. So maybe the best course of action is just staying here. The armrests on these chairs fold up. It won't be the Ritz, but I guess we can't expect that right now."

Tory cocked her head, speaking for the first time in a long while. "And can you explain to us what we're going to do at this research facility, Galen?"

He sighed. "I think – if you all are willing – I think we're going to take a long trip."

* * *

It was growing dark, and they had bunked down. All but Starbuck, who had left the lecture stadium about an hour ago. When Anders found her, she was sitting on the bottom concrete step of the library. She leaned back on her elbows, legs thrown out in front of her and crossed at the ankles. Her head was tipped back, and she gazed at the stars.

"Hey." He walked up slowly; took a seat on the step above her, leaning on his knees. Just far enough away.

Her gaze didn't slip from the night sky. The moonlight reflected on her face, making it glow slightly. "Do you ever – do you ever wonder what's out there?"

He frowned, though she didn't catch it. "Honestly, no. I've always felt that I had enough to keep track of right here where we are." He choked slightly as the weight of what he'd said hit him. "I guess that's not stopping me anymore." Silence for a moment as he studied her face. "What do you see?"

She swallowed, seemed to fight back tears of her own. Threw an arm up and pointed to the sky. "That's… Aries, the ram. That's Taurus, the bull. And there – just at the bottom of the sky, you can only just see it, it's so faint – that's Capricornus." A strange pause. "It was always my favorite. The last time…." She swallowed. "The last time I looked at these, I was with my family."

He looked down, studied his feet. "You asked me who I lost. Did you lose someone? Someone special?"

She sighed. "No. No, I don't have a world ending to blame for losing people. Just myself. Everybody I've lost, I've lost because of me." She shook her head. "I can't believe I'm telling you this. It seems so weird."

"Why?"

She turned to look at him for the first time. "I guess… you just remind me of someone."

His eyes didn't waver from hers. "Like you remind me of my wife?"

A small laugh, mirthless. "Yeah. A lot like that, actually."

They sat in silence for a while, him looking at the stars as if for the first time. Finally: "So where are we going?"

She glanced at him. "You're going to think I'm crazy."

"Listen, kid. Everything has just been destroyed. Everybody else is seemingly dead. The five of us apparently have some kind of common trait that prevented us from dying, out of the whole world." He grinned. "There's not a hell of a lot that I'd find crazy right now."

She grinned at him; it was the first time he'd seen a real smile from her since they'd met. "Okay. You win. But remember, you asked for it." She gestured to the sky. "We're going out there."

"Okay, maybe a little crazy." She laughed then, and he did too. And it kept him from feeling the awful, awful pain he'd been feeling since he'd woken up. "All right. I guess I should get to sleep. It sounds like we've got a lot of excitement ahead of us."

He pushed himself up off the steps and walked back in the direction he'd come. After a few seconds, she called after him. "Hey – I forgot to ask you about your stomach. Are you okay?"

He looked back at her, lifting his shirt slightly. Dimly, in the light of the moon, she could see caked blood in the line of the wound, but the skin around it looked clear. She nodded. "Doesn't look infected."

"No. I don't think it is." He nodded at her. "What about you? You got pretty beaten up yourself during that explosion." He nodded toward her leg; the back of her calf was as stained as his shirt.

She nodded quickly. "Oh, yeah. It's fine." She grinned. "And I can handle anything, anyway."

He nodded. Studied her a moment. Then, with a quick wave, turned on his heel and walked away. She watched as he left. Once he rounded the corner, she looked down and carefully rolled up the pant leg of her flight suit, which she still wore, days after the crash. There was blood crusted on the back of her calf, the remnants of what had been, the last time she'd looked at it, in that coffee shop with Sam, a gaping lesion. The wound was gone.


	9. Chapter 9

**A Flash Before the Eyes**

**by cliosmuse  
**

**Chapter 9  
**

By the time Lee regained his composure, the marines, Kara, and his father were gone. It was the last of those that he now sought as he stormed through the hallways of Galactica, causing heads to turn in his wake.

In CIC, it was Helo, not his father, who had the misfortune of running into him. The big man looked up from his post as Lee burst into the room. "Apollo, what are you –"

Lee rushed at the XO, fury in his eyes. "Captain Agathon, have you seen my father?"

"Okay, okay. Just calm down, Lee. What's wrong?"

He was nearly screaming now. "I said, _Have you seen my father?_"

Helo looked down at him, growing angry himself at Adama's impertinence. Sternly: "And I said, _What's wrong?_"

Lee closed his eyes and took a deep breath, trying furiously to remain calm. "He's had Kara arrested. It seemed serious."

Karl Agathon's shoulder's fell, the determination in his face replaced all at once by sad acceptance. "He's in his office." Helo watched the doorway after Lee left for a few moments, deep in thought. When a hand touched his shoulder, he jumped in shock before locking eyes with his wife. "Gods, Sharon, you scared me."

She smiled sadly (most of the smiles on this ship seemed sad this morning). "What's wrong?"

He sighed. "It's Starbuck. I think she's in trouble."

* * *

He found his father where Helo said he'd be. The hatch of his office was closed but, when Lee tried it, unfastened. He walked in without preamble and was confronted by the older man, dressed in uniform and sitting at his desk. On his nose were perched his glasses; his eyes were fixed on the papers in front of him. To his right sat a glass of ambrosia. As Lee walked in, he raised his head. "It took you longer than I thought it would. Though I do still expect you to knock like everyone else."

Lee let out a shaky breath, clenching and unclenching his fists at his side. He seethed. "Just what the hell did you think you were doing…."

The admiral cut him off. "Lee, you may not be military anymore, you may even have been president, but I am still the admiral of this Fleet."

His anger intensified to a white heat. "Then, just what the hell did you think you were doing, _Admiral_?"

"She's a Cylon, Lee."

"I don't care if she's a frakking giraffe! You have to have a reason to arrest someone."

"I did, Lee."

Despite his restless energy, he stayed fixed to his spot, his gaze firm, his voice steely. "I _pardoned_ the Cylons, _Admiral_, in case you weren't paying attention."

The admiral leaned back in his chair, steepling his hands in front of him. "You pardoned Tigh, Anders, Foster, and Tyrol. And you pardoned them for crimes already committed. I'm afraid that's not what this is."

Lee's face fell. "Then what? As one of the few people on this ship qualified to represent her, I need to know the charges."

"_Represent_ her?" He snorted a bitter laugh. "I've spoken to the president. There won't be a trial. You were out there. You looked at that place. Can't you see we're beyond that? It's too late for governments, for courts. She's been arrested, with Leoben Conoy, Lee, for treason against the Fleet."

And suddenly his legs couldn't hold him. The seconds ticked by as he dropped heavily into the chair before his father's desk, head slightly bowed. His eyes darted back and forth as he tried to make sense of it. When he spoke, his voice was a whisper: "Treason?" He shook his head. "According to whom?"

Bill Adama let out a deep sigh. His former daughter-in-law had come to him, early that morning. She'd told him about an overheard conversation between Thrace and Conoy in a storeroom, the door of which had been left slightly ajar, shortly after their return from Earth. She'd been frightened, she'd said; had debated not telling him at all out of fear of reprisal but had realized she'd had no choice, given the weight of the information. She reiterated that she may have misheard or misinterpreted; but it was clear to him that there was little here to be misheard or misinterpreted. When she'd begged him not to tell Starbuck who had informed on her, he had agreed.

And so the admiral said none of this to his son, Dee's ex-husband. "I'm afraid I'm not at liberty to say. But it's a source I can trust."

Lee's anger returned abruptly, and he pushed himself out of his chair. "A source you won't even _reveal_?" With bitter sarcasm lacing his voice: "And what exactly does this supposed treason entail?"

In his gravel monotone (infuriating to Lee at this moment for its unforgiveable blandness), he intoned: "Conspiracy to instigate genocide. She and Conoy are in communication with the Cavils. Their intention is to reveal our whereabouts to them. Whether or not that's already been accomplished remains to be seen. But if they come here en masse and we're still here, we'll be annihilated."

Lee shook his head; began pacing the room nervously. His voice was accusing. "You can't be serious. You can't possibly imagine that Kara would ever dream of doing something like that. She'd give her life for this Fleet, again and again and again if she could, and you know it."

His father raised an eyebrow. "A not entirely inappropriate turn of phrase."

Lee frowned. "That's not what I meant. Don't twist my words."

Adama sighed; took off his glasses and pinched the bridge of his nose. "Son, this is difficult for us all. But it's time for us to begin to come to terms with the fact that she is not who we thought she was. Maybe she never was. I know that's hard, but –"

"_Hard_?" Lee's face was a mask of agony; of fury; of disbelief. "It's 'difficult for us _all_?' 'You know it's _hard_'? Well, that's just great." He shook his head and was silent for a few interminable moments. "You know, all my life – _all my life –_ I've tried to live up to what you wanted from me. All my life I've wanted to be you. And now to see – how blind you really are." He turned toward the hatch. "If you need me, you'll probably find me in the brig. But I'd advise you to stay away. I'd rather be with a Cylon right now than near you."

As his son left, his eyes turned back down to the folder in front of him. The pages within it were worn from the months during which he'd leafed through it daily, continuously. Disciplinary notices; photographs; silly notes. Now, he closed the folder and lifted it in his left hand. Pulling a lighter from his pocket, he lit fire to its corner, tossed it into the wastebasket beside his desk, and, leaning back, watched Kara Thrace's life go up in smoke.

* * *

"They're going to airlock me, you know."

Her back was to the bars, her face down, her brows knit, and his entry had been quiet. Yet she knew he was there. "How'd you know it was me?"

She turned around and leaned toward him, against the bars. "I figured it wouldn't take long. I know you, Lee Adama." She paused. "Did they tell you what I did?"

He frowned at her, disapproving. "They told me what you didn't do." He smiled. "I know you, Kara Thrace."

She rolled her eyes (defense strategy: diffuse emotionally difficult moments): "Tell _them_ that."

He refused to play along. "Don't say 'them.' Say 'him.' We can't pretend he's not the reason you're here."

She shook her head; her gaze lowered, as it had been since his entrance. Now, she studied his hands, clasped around the bars in front of her, his fingers just missing her own. "He's not the reason. I haven't given him much reason to trust me." She looked up, then, her eyes desperate, pleading, afraid. "Did you hear me, Lee? They're going to airlock me."

In an instant his hand was through the bars and on her cheek; she leaned against it. "Not if I have anything to say about it. I meant what I said. I'm with you, Kara."

"And I meant what I said. I owe you enough already that I won't be able to make good on. And I'm –" She choked on the unaccustomed display of emotion. Sought to reform her steely shell. "I'm sorry for that."

An intense whisper: "Don't you dare talk like that. You'll get through this. We'll get through this. You're Starbuck, right? You can do anything." He pulled his hand back and began pacing back and forth in front of her, glancing at her from time to time. "Look, we'll put together a case for you. It shouldn't be that difficult. We'll track your whereabouts from the time you walked off on the surface and throughout the night. I mean, gods, you were probably with me when this alleged conversation happened anyway. There must be a million holes that we can find in this story, and we'll find them, one by one. I'll get Romo to help us if I need to." He stopped. Looked back at her. "After all, they can't airlock you just because you're a…." His voice hitched. "Just because you're a Cylon."

From the cell to the left came a harsh laugh. He swung his head in its direction and was greeted by Leoben Conoy's self-satisfied smirk.

He glared. "What's so funny?"

The Cylon let out another surprised whoop of laughter. "_You_ are, Apollo. _You_ are." He paused, contained his laughter. Cocked his head and studied Lee. "Do you really still think she's a Cylon? You say you love her, Apollo." A pause, and a final twist of the knife: "Don't you know her at all?"


	10. Chapter 10

**A Flash Before the Eyes**

**by cliosmuse  
**

**Chapter 10  
**

Saul Tigh grumbled a bit as he trudged along after the scientist. He glanced back at Sam and Starbuck. "So tell me, _Starbuck_, why is it precisely that you're still wearing those gloves?"

She looked down at her hands. The others had removed theirs (no external injuries, seemingly none internal either: no need). She shrugged. "Force of habit, I guess."

"So where are we going again?" Saul grumbled at their leader on this particular walk, Galen Tyrol.

"Brooklyn. We're going to Brooklyn." They traipsed along toward the Manhattan Bridge somberly. They had been walking for five hours. The journey could have been done more quickly, of course (even without availing themselves of subterranean or overground transportation). But, more often than pleased Starbuck, Galen would stop short in his tracks and turn in a circle, marveling at what had become of the City. (She and Sam, of course, had already borne witness to these sights on their journey uptown; but, in the end, she refrained from mentioning the delays, for she could tell from Sam's occasional winces that his body needed the rest.)

The Upper West Side: in ruin. The Park: shrouded in death. Times Square: bodies upon bodies; neon lights illuminated only in memory.

Tory: "And where are we going _after that_? That's the part that is sitting a little uneasy with me."

"Well, before we do anything, we're going to check radio waves, the internet, satellite transmissions for signs of life." He walked on but shot a pointed look back at Starbuck. "Just because _you_ say there's no one left doesn't mean there's no one left."

Tory frowned. "No, I got that part too. It's the next part I'm not so sold on."

Again, Tyrol glared at Starbuck as he began to speak. "For the past fifty years, the U.S. government has been working steadily – and, I should add, covertly – on problems of deep-space travel. You know from your history books that the farthest we've sent a manned shuttle is to the orbit of Neptune. But the trip wasn't very well-received publicly. NASA was all but disbanded, and the space program has been sort of an underground project since then." He paused. "Figuratively and literally."

Tory frowned. "Can you remind me what happened?"

"It was before our time. Actually, my grandfather worked on that project; devoted his life to it. What happened shattered my family. It's why my father and I never spoke after I decided to pursue my degree in theoretical physics. Six months after liftoff, we lost satellite contact; after a year, we began doubting the survival of the vessel and crew. There were a few holdouts –my grandfather among them – who tried to remind the president that the trip was projected to take years. But it didn't do much good. We mourned our dead. There were vigils around the world for months, protests of the space program. So it was put into… remission, I guess. And when the crew came back into radio contact eleven years and thirteen days later, too many people had already forgotten or filed the whole expedition away as an unmitigated disaster to really notice. For all intents and purposes, they were dead; and, after all, there was no more space program."

Tory nodded. "But you kept working."

"And others before me. Communication through deep space is one serious problem. But so is our lifespan. It took the crew of the Apollo Redux a decade to get to Neptune and back. By the time they returned, they were ten years older. So if we couldn't make ships to go faster –"

Starbuck: "You couldn't?"

He glared. "We couldn't. We'd have to make our crew live longer. Hence our work on human stasis."

Tory shook her head. "So let me get this straight. You want to put the five of us into some sort of lala-land and shoot us out to the end of the galaxy? This is the great plan? Why in God's name would we want to do that? Why on Earth wouldn't we just try to rebuild what's here? I didn't become vice president of one of the largest financial corporations in the world without knowing a thing or two about organizational management."

Sam spoke for the first time. "Tory, the Earth is deadly. For whatever reason, we seem to be tolerating it. But that doesn't –" He choked on his words. "Doesn't mean our children could. My daughter didn't." He swallowed; tried to regain his composure. "We'd forage for a while; eventually run out of edible foods. And we'd die. I think I'd rather take my chances on space."

Galen pulled a map from his pocket. In the night, armed with a flashlight, Starbuck had raided the astronomy department, searching for viable representations of familiar star clusters. What she found were fairly rudimentary, but they would do: she had put together, as best she could, a heading and set of relative coordinates between Earth and the Twelve Colonies. The professor coughed. "And I guess we have a destination."

They walked on in silence for some time, each deep in his own thoughts (perhaps even contemplating this seeming shared destiny). Finally, Saul paused; glanced at his feet pointedly. "So, if we can fly to the outer corners of space, why can't we drive to this lab of yours?"

Tyrol kept walking. He felt as though he had been responding to Tigh's questions – all of their questions – all morning. He didn't know why the whole trip seemed to have suddenly become his responsibility: after all, this entire journey was Starbuck's idea. But, as she didn't seem inclined to respond to Tigh, he did: "First of all, a transporter would be unstable in traversing all of this rubble." (Bodies, he meant. Traversing all these bodies.) "Second, and most importantly, the electric starters in all of these vehicles will have been fried. Like we should have been."

As if to demonstrate his point, Saul crouched to the ground, placed his palm flush against it, and looked up at Galen with a smirk that read, "Like that?" As he drew his hand away, a blue spark, like lightning, followed. He dusted his hand off and shoved it in his pocket.

Galen nodded. "So we walk."

Tigh walked more quickly to catch up with the professor. "Oh, come on, Doc. We haven't even tried a transporter. What if you're wrong?"

Galen stopped in his tracks and swung around, his face red. "Okay. You want to know if I'm wrong? Does anybody else want to see if I'm wrong? Fine. We'll see if I'm wrong. It's the end of the world, and we'll see if I'm fucking wrong. From now on, get _her_ to lead this little party."

He stomped over to the nearest vehicle, glared back at the group behind him, and reached his hand in through the open window, past the charcoaled driver. His hand was inches away from the starter when suddenly the engine came to life, and he fell backward, away from the car, scrambling on hands and feet away from it, crab-like. His eyes were wide. "I didn't touch it. I didn't touch it."

For a few moments there was only silence, and the noise of the engine, almost obscene in the quiet of this city.

It was Tory who broke the spell. "Well, it looks like you were at least partly wrong."

Galen was shaking his head, looking at his hand. "I didn't touch it. Didn't lay a hand on it."

Tory rolled her eyes. "Okay, so we'll do a little experiment." Looking around herself, she latched her eyes on the vehicle behind the one Galen had started. She marched toward it deliberately and opened the door (her hair stood slightly as she touched the metal). Reaching in, she held her hand six inches from the starter. She felt a slight shock, and the engine roared.

She pulled back from the car and smiled at the others in satisfaction. "I'd have to say, that's a pretty good party trick." She grinned slyly. "I think the only question now, Galen, is: your ride or mine?"

And so they debated the merits of the two vehicles over the terrain ahead, enjoyed to a degree the focus on something so frivolous in a world now barren of frivolity. When at last they were ready, Tory looked pleased with herself, Tyrol put out. They called to the others, and Sam and Tigh came forward. But Starbuck was nowhere to be seen.

* * *

Once she'd slipped out of sight, she began running. She ran and ran and ran, and it felt good to push her lungs to their maximum capacity, to breathe in this grey air. At first, she could hear their voices calling to her, but after five or ten minutes, it receded to nothing. It would do no good to explain why she had to do this alone.

Finally, she slowed, stopped. Pulled off her right-hand glove (made the mistake as soon as she did of brushing her fingers against a lamppost and pulled them back in an instant as the shock ripped through her body; looked at fingers in minor amazement as the blackened tips began to repair before her eyes). She dug her hand deep into her pocket and pulled out a pen and pad (a set insulated in non-conductive material; it didn't bear the scorched blackness that most of the bills that fluttered in the wind did). On the top sheet were scrawled copious notes in a script that looked still so incredibly foreign that she couldn't imagine how she'd written it.

Directions to the research facility. Access codes.

"Why do you need to write it down?" Galen had asked her before they'd left the university that morning.

"I'll feel better if I write it down," she said. "Just in case we get separated."

And so now, alone, she turned toward Battery Park to find Anastasia Dualla.


	11. Chapter 11

**A Flash Before the Eyes**

**by cliosmuse  
**

**Chapter 11  
**

Apollo blinked. "Don't you know her at all?" It hung in the air, heavy. He tried to catch Kara's gaze, but her eyes were fixed intently on Leoben. "Kara?" A plea for clarification.

She looked back at him, studied him for several interminable moments, time ticking by. "Did you really think that, Lee? Did you really think I was a Cylon?"

Guilt washed over his face. He sank down to his knees in confusion; she mirrored his movement on the other side of the bars. "I –." He shook his head, his eyes on the floor. He ran a nervous hand through his hair (so much longer than it used to be, she thought). "I didn't know what to think. I just –. I'm… I'm so sorry." He looked into her eyes, pain in his, and then quickly looked down again. "Oh, gods, I should have known."

Her hand reached through the bars lightning-quick and grabbed his free hand. When he finally looked up, her face held none of what he expected. No disappointment, no distrust, no anger. No: rather, she looked confused; surprised; relieved; astonished, even. Her eyes sparkled slightly. "Lee." She shook him lightly. "Lee Adama, you thought I was a Cylon. And you still came here? The things you said, this morning –. You still meant them?"

He looked up at her. Took a moment to collect his thoughts. "I wasn't sure what to think last night. When I got back from the surface. And then I spent a long time with my thoughts, and then with you. And I realized that it didn't matter." He shrugged. "You're Kara. And that's who you'll always be, no matter what you are. And that's all that's important." He shook his head, his anger at himself returning. Pulled his hand from her grasp. "But he's right. How could I have been so convinced? Maybe I don't know you at all."

Her face still held that strange combination of confusion and wonderment. "No." Her voice was steely. "No, Lee. You _do_ know me. Better than anyone in the worlds. And you still –." She paused, hoping he would understand, that she wouldn't have to tell him. But his distraught expression told her he wasn't convinced. (_You've done this too often, expected him just to know_.) She reached back for his hand and shook it lightly; leaned in toward him from across the bars. "Lee, you've been telling me… for hours, for days… frak, for years… that you're willing to stand beside me, no matter what." She frowned. "But there's this darkness inside of me. This chaos." She laughed bitterly. "Frak, I wouldn't stick with me if I had a choice. I spend so much time just… just hating myself. Do you understand what that's like?" She paused, remembered a certain moment when he'd wanted to die. "But maybe you do. And so I've never wanted to believe you…." She paused, prepared herself for the moment. This wasn't just a confession of love, like in the sands of New Caprica. This was something much, much more profound. "Lee, I believe you now." She paused. Gripped his hand tightly, dangerously. "And I need you now more than ever."

* * *

"A very interesting move." Dee's head swung around. She was standing outside the brig, watching Starbuck discreetly. Lee had left not long before after an extended but muffled conversation with the brig's newest houseguest. As Dee watched them, kneeling on floor, leaning toward one another as if in prayer and whispering through the bars, fingers just grazing, she felt a slight pang of jealousy – but not nearly what she expected. She had, she found, not lied to Lee all that time ago, when she'd told him that he and Starbuck were linked, when she told him that she'd have him until the Cylons or Kara Thrace came back into their lives. (Though the statement seemed to have newfound meaning in retrospect.)

Now was no time for reverie, though, now, as D'Anna Biers watched Dee watching Starbuck in the brig. "I have to wonder, though, why you don't just tell them all what you are? What could be so awful that you have to hide it?"

Dee turned on her heel and walked briskly away from the brig and from the Cylon. "I don't know what you're talking about. Please leave me alone."

D'Anna was nothing if not persistent. She followed Dualla down the hall. "The way I figure it is this. Getting rid of Starbuck through the lie you told accomplishes two things. First, the Fleet does away with Kara Thrace. But second – and maybe this is even more important to you – the Fleet leaves Earth." She quickly surpassed the smaller woman and threw an arm in front of her and against the wall, blocking her in. She stood over her and looked down with something akin to menace. "So my next question, obviously, was: _Why does she want these things?_ It's not simply because you're a Cylon. The Fleet has started tolerating us fairly well. No, I think you realize that Kara Thrace and Earth are the sparks of their memories. And there is something you don't want them to remember."

Dee gritted her teeth. "Let me go. I'll have you thrown in the brig for assault."

D'Anna let out a scornful laugh. "Well, then I'd be able to just ask Starbuck what your secret is, wouldn't I? You must know that she knows." Her face contorted in a mockery of sympathy. "Oh, my dear, it can't possibly be as bad as all that, now."

"Let me go!" In a burst of strength (perhaps she'd learned something in those self-defense classes after all), she pushed D'Anna away from her and began running down the corridor.

After her, the Cylon's voice, calm, thoughtful: "I remember the first time one of my model spoke to you. I remember you told me that you joined this Fleet because you wanted to believe in something." A pause. "So, do you? Believe in something?"

As Dee took off down the hallway, D'Anna laughed slightly to herself. "I suppose we'll just have to wait and see."

* * *

"Why do you think she was here?" Kara turned her head slightly toward the Cylon in the cell next to hers.

"How do you know she was here?" He'd seen Dee as she peered cautiously into the brig, but Starbuck's back was against the bars. (So very contrary to her normally guarded nature; he wasn't sure if it suggested a death wish or a newly acquired sense of peace.)

Kara shrugged. "Call it a sixth sense."

"I'd call it more than that." He paused; changed the subject. "You've asked a lot of him, you know."

"I know. But he wants to help me. And I need him. He's the only one who can do this."

"Can you trust him?"

She glared. "As if I can trust you. After the things you've done to me, I don't know why I'm speaking to you at all."

He cocked his head. "You keep me close because I'm part of the plan, and you know that. You need me as much as you think you need him. All this has happened before, and all will happen again. And you keep me close because you're afraid: because you don't really know yourself without me." A beat. "Can you trust him?"

She sighed. "I think I finally know the answer to that." Silence for a moment. "So?"

Leoben sighed. "Why was she here? I couldn't tell you. Perhaps she bears remorse."

"I thought Cylons didn't feel remorse."

He smiled idly. "Cylons feel a great many things you couldn't possibly imagine."


	12. Chapter 12

**A Flash Before the Eyes**

**by cliosmuse  
**

**Chapter 12  
**

Anastasia Dualla first learned to use a gun after her family was murdered before her eyes.

She'd been a child in South Africa when Greater China first began extending its reach (so slow at first that few in the world really noticed). It moved into sub-Saharan Africa first with the mission (it claimed) of offering social uplift. Poverty-stricken African countries, still reeling from the fevers that had claimed so many lives a quarter century before, were only too happy to accept such help, especially after they were assured that they and their leaders, even the most corrupt among them, would maintain some degree of autonomy despite existing under China's aegis.

Promises always look pretty on paper.

Within a decade, when Anastasia first began thinking of going to university, most of the African continent was being exploited by Greater China for its natural resources. The rest of the world still paid little notice. It never really had, after all. The poorest African countries submitted willingly. In the wealthier countries, fringe rebel groups began springing up, attempting to fight the so-called "invasion." When the umbrella government responded by curtailing the offered courses at the University of Cape Town, widespread student protests broke out. After a week of unrest, the University's doors were ordered closed, and Anastasia's older brother Timothy, a biology student who had intended to pursue a career in medicine, left home to join the rebel cause.

The rebels of South Africa liked to claim that the War began in their country. If the Earth had survived, scholars someday would have found this claim rather debatable, but there was no doubt that the fighting in the Duallas's country was both early and fierce. Anastasia prayed nightly for her brother's safe return; and, when day after day arrived and he did not, she offered God all she could think of: herself. She became a priest.

The rebels fought valiantly. As the rest of the world slowly and irrevocably became embroiled in war, the street soldiers of Cape Town and Johannesburg continued the struggle. But – and, again, if scholars lived to tell of it, they would say it was inevitable – South Africa did fall, and hard. After those early idealistic protests at the university, Anastasia would not see her brother again until he was marched into her mother's home by heavily-armed soldiers (South Africans, she noticed bitterly: not even foreigners). She, her mother, her brother, and her two sisters (the youngest only seven) were kneeled in a line before their kitchen stove and, one by one, they were shot in the back of the head, execution-style. (If only those who claimed this "war" had claimed no lives could see this, her family, lying dead beside her.)

Anastasia was at the end of the line. As she heard the shots, felt the soft thuds, tears coursed down her face. But when her turn at last came there was no shot. A voice behind her, in her native language: "So, little girl, you are a priest?"

A subtle nod of her head was returned with a cruel laugh. Items thrown before her, all found on the kitchen table: her Bible, her rosary. Her passport. "Then go be a priest. But do not do it here." By the time their boots pounded out of the door to her small home the tears on her cheeks had dried, leaving only salt. She would not cry again until the world ended.

She left South Africa that night, under cover of darkness. Found, through various channels, a military airstrip that freighted refugees out, for a price. She left the country on the day before the South African government finally collapsed. Many flights later, she arrived in New York, where she was granted asylum. She turned to the Church, because it was all she knew, but she hated God for making her live.

After a few weeks, she bought the gun and its non-conductive storage chest. It stayed under her bed, but every now and again, she would take it out and toy with the idea of completing the job those soldiers had left unfinished.

But in the end she couldn't. Because by the time she had arrived in New York, Anastasia Dualla had lost her faith in God; and she feared the unknown too much to face it.

* * *

When Dualla woke after the blast shook Brooklyn, she kneeled before her church's altar and prayed that she was dead. And when she realized that she was not, she cursed God again – as she had so many times in these few months – and went to her room to retrieve the weapon.

At last she stumbled out into the street, and the first thing she noticed was the death. There had been a few parishioners in the pews of the church, but nothing prepared her for the number of bodies strewn about the city. In a flash, she saw her brother, her little sisters, her mother, their blood pooling on the wooden floor of their house, and she dropped to her knees and vomited until she couldn't anymore.

And then she walked, with no particular destination in mind. Walked and walked – not, strangely enough, toward Manhattan, but rather past Brooklyn Heights (where, she found, death did not distinguish between rich and poor) to the Docks, where she could see the Statue of Liberty. The first night, after looting a bakery of its burnt breads, she broke into a Brooklyn Heights home to sleep, gun clutched to her heart until she finally dozed off near the dawn. She slept on an overstuffed sofa among the gaudy trophies of a life well-lived until sometime in the afternoon; it wasn't until she awoke that the bright light revealed that she had shared the room with the family's dead Doberman all night. She had already put two bullets into a burnt eye before she realized that it was, of course, already dead, and she vowed never to come into a home after dark again (indeed, as long as Anastasia Dualla would be able to remember that moment, she would never again sleep through the night with out seeing its smoked fur and the bullet hole that replaced its eye). She made her way a bit farther; along the way calling aloud for help, but she grew accustomed to the idea that there was no one left to respond.

The second night, she spent huddled in the Brooklyn Battery Tunnel, a flashlight (the only useful take from that Brooklyn mansion) clutched in the hand opposite the gun. Once, she felt something on her leg, and she screamed and screamed. The beam from her flashlight was all it took to scare the cockroach away. (_How horrible, that they're all that's left._)

She was awake that whole night. Occasionally, her thoughts drifted back to the woman in the church, whose presence had frightened her to the bone. Thought back to her words: "I know something about you." It all seemed so trivial now. That woman, her fear – all gone, vanished in a flash before her eyes, and all that was left, it seemed, was ruin. Ruin and Anastasia.

"God is punishing me."

Her voice echoed through the tunnel, against the dead cars and bodies (too loud!), and she threw the back of her hand, holding the gun, against her mouth in an attempt to stifle the noise. But it continued.

With the dawn, she pushed herself upright and made her way to the Manhattan mouth of the tunnel; she squinted against the light on the horizon. Her stomach rumbled and she found yet another bakery with more burnt bread and some dried fruits, just edible. And then to Battery Park, where she sat on a bench and stared at Lady Liberty (charred, it seemed) until her eyes slipped closed.

She dreamed of the dead dog.

It was later that day in Battery Park that Ana would finally encounter the woman from the church. She would not see her again until she joined the military against her father's wishes and was stationed on the Battlestar Galactica, nearly one thousand years later.

"Fear is not a sin," Anastasia Dualla once told Kara Thrace in a church in Brooklyn. If there were storytellers left on this world, they might have later recounted that Anastasia Dualla's tragic flaw had been precisely her fear. But, really, one could hardly blame her. And there would be none left to tell that story, after all.


	13. Chapter 13

**A Flash Before the Eyes**

**by cliosmuse  
**

**Chapter 13  
**

The first person he went to was the last person he wanted to admit he needed. He found him in memorial hallway, hands buried in his pockets, staring at her photograph. "Hey, Sam."

The man jerked slightly at his voice. "Oh. Hey." He looked back at Kara's picture. "She looks so happy here. I bet she'd just won a big hand of triad." A beat, and he gestured at the photo. "I don't know why I haven't taken it down yet. I guess I wasn't sure if it was my job anymore. I didn't put it up, after all. I'd never even seen this one before you put it here." He paused; threw his eyes toward Lee. "You took this, didn't you? It's you she's smiling at."

Lee cleared his throat; their conversation would always be awkward, especially where she was concerned. "I thought you were going to the surface today. You know, to check things out. Explore those memories of yours."

Sam shrugged. "All passage has been suspended. I don't know why. I spent a hour this morning trying to figure it out, but no one will say anything."

Lee rocked back on his feet; his eyes were focused on Sam's shoes. "No one's been allowed to leave since she was arrested this morning."

At that, Sam's eyes shot to meet his own: he was suddenly intensely present. "No. No." He paused. "It's serious, isn't it? Tell me what happened."

Lee sighed. "She has been _accused_ –" He emphasized the word. "– of treason." He laughed bitterly. "And yes, the charges are very serious." A pause. "There won't be a trial."

Sam shook his head; looked back at the wall and reached out absently to touch Starbuck's frozen image. "But the punishment for treason is –"

"Yes."

"So they're going to –"

"That's why I'm here. You and me, Sam. We're going to keep that from happening. It's what we were meant to do."

* * *

She didn't have to look up to know who it was. "Hi, Sammy."

He walked toward the bars and looked down at her; she was seated on the edge of her bunk, elbows on her knees. Her long hair fell across her cheek as she stared intently at the floor, brows furrowed. It was an expression he'd seen many times, but only since she'd returned. Only on the Demetrius. "Hi yourself."

She cocked her head toward him. "Did Lee tell you?"

He shook his head in frustration, pushing a hand through his hair. "Yeah, he told me. And he told me about this crazy plan of yours, too. I may be reckless sometimes, but – gods, this plan of yours is going to get you _both_ killed."

Her eyes cut toward his: angry, excited, intense. Another look he'd seen time and again on the Demetrius. "Better than dying here, right?"

He was silent a moment. Thought carefully about how to broach the next topic. "Kara, there was someone else on that planet, wasn't there?"

Her eyes narrowed, and she leaned back. Dispassionately: "Now, why would you say something like that, Sam?"

He shook his head. "Lee told me that you're not one of us. But there's something about you. Every time I'm near you I remember a little bit more. Like now. I look at you, and suddenly I'm filled with this vivid memory of walking through New York and listening to Tyrol explaining to us what just happened. I remember that he was a physicist." He stared at her. "But I try and I try and I try: and I still can't remember who the Fifth is."

"That's because I wasn't there when you met."

He nodded as if she'd confirmed his deepest suspicion. "So you know. I knew you did. And if you could just tell them –"

She stood suddenly, walked quickly toward him so that she was face to face with him through the bars. "_No_, Sammy."

He frowned; shook his head, ran his hand through his hair once again: a nervous gesture. His eyes brimmed slightly with tears he fought. "Kara, I can't just let you die, not over a lie. Whoever it is – they're why you're here. Why won't you just _say_ something?"

In the next cell, Leoben, lying on his own cot, staring at the ceiling, laughed slightly. "Because she's too reverent to defy prophesy. She believes too deeply, even to her own peril."

Sam glared at the voice (its owner didn't see, continued to stare at the vacant ceiling). "Kara, surely you don't think –"

She lowered her head, spoke with quiet conviction. "Soon there will be Four, glorious in awakening. Struggling with the knowledge of their true selves. The pain of revelation bringing new clarity. And in the midst of confusion he will find her, enemies brought together by impossible longing –"

(Beneath her voice, the Cylon again: "That's me, in case you didn't realize." And Sam: "Just shut the frak up already.")

"– enemies now joined as one. The way forward, at once unthinkable, yet inevitable."

"But Kara –"

"And the Fifth, still in shadow, will claw toward the light, hungering for redemption –"

"Redemption?"

"– that will only come in the howl of terrible suffering."

His mouth hung open; his eyes were wide. "Kara, where did you hear that?"

At last she looked up. "I've been hearing it in my dreams, Sam. I wake up every night with _this_ pounding in my brain. And what it means is that it's not my destiny to reveal the Fifth."

Silence for a moment. Then his hands, tight fists, moved to his hips, and he clenched his jaw in frustration. "So, just like that. That's your decision. You'd rather die than go against some prophetic nonsense."

When he looked at her again, her face was a plea. A whisper, a small smile, radiating her hope: "'And then they will join in the promised land, gathered on the wings of an angel. Not an end, but a beginning.' I'm not going to die, Sam. We're going to go there, together." Her eyes asked for trust. "Will you do what Lee asks you?"

He looked around for a moment, anywhere but at her. "Yes, okay? Of course I'll do it. I was always going to." And then he turned to leave.

"Sam?" He paused. Turned his head toward her, but slightly, so that she caught his profile. "Thank you."

He shrugged, the smallest hint of a smile on his face. "I always said my girl was too lucky to check out."

* * *

Lee Adama stood outside the hatch that led to Chief (not Chief, Specialist now, he reminded himself) Galen Tyrol's quarters. When they'd arrived, Sam had put a hand on his arm. "Let me talk to him. I have it on pretty good authority that he's been a wreck since Cally died. He and I – we don't exactly like each other. But we do have something in common."

Lee had nodded; Sam's points were good ones. And now he stood outside Tyrol's quarters trying to decipher the quiet voices over the baby's cries.

At last, the hatch opened, and Sam beckoned to him.

He walked in. Tyrol was sitting on his bunk in near-darkness, the baby on his lap. His eyes were ringed with black circles. Sam stood to one side. "I've explained to him. I've asked him if he'll come with us."

Lee looked back and forth between the two. "And?"

"I can't." Tyrol looked down. "Nicky needs me here. And I just –." He sighed. "I think anyone would tell you I'm not – together enough for this right now."

Apollo shook his head in frustration. "Great. Just great."

"That doesn't mean I won't help you." He caught Lee's eye. "If I could have saved Cally…. Do you understand?" He looked back toward Nicky. "You were planning on gathering the four of us for this. Don't. Tigh and Tory can't help you."

"Why not?"

"Tigh wants to be human too much. 'Be the man you want to be.' He'll tell Adama as soon you tell him." A pause. "Tory – Tory's the opposite. Tory doesn't want to be human at all. You can't trust her."

Lee nodded slowly, taking it in. "But if not them, who –"

Tyrol sighed. "You'll figure it out. If you're meant to do this, you'll figure it out." He paused. "You'll need a Raptor and a pilot. I can get you the Raptor. I can still authorize shuttle departures. It's about all I can do. You find the pilot yourself. And one more thing." He glanced at Sam. "Anders says that Starbuck wanted me because she thought you needed a scientist. Well, I'm no good for that, either. Starbuck and Longshot here remember more about me than I do. But I do have an idea."

* * *

"You want me to _what_?" Gaius Baltar looked nervously around his commune, where Lee and Sam had cornered him. They had taken the opposite approach to Baltar: Lee stood directly before him, Anders to the side, leaning against the bulkhead, arms across his chest. Baltar shook his head, clutching at his side slightly (his wound still pained him). "Is this some kind of trap? A set-up? You want to catch me on tape involving myself in conspiracy, is that it?"

Lee shook his head. "No. No, of course not."

They had asked Baltar's followers to clear the room for this conversation, but evidence of their fervor surrounded them. As Lee and Baltar talked, Sam looked around the room. Radio equipment surrounded him, the detritus of Baltar's newfound media persona. Velvet curtains hid the alloy walls from view, making the interior of the room feel anything but an abandoned storage locker on a battlestar. His eye caught upon a gold frame, surrounded by candles, that contained Baltar's image; he stared at it, transfixed, as the conversation progressed.

"Are you certain of that, Mr. Adama? The president has made it very clear to me that she values neither the law nor my rights as a Colonial citizen."

Lee held his eyes. "But I do, and you know it."

Baltar cocked his head to the right, his expression that of a man listening to wise counsel. At one point, he nodded vaguely, as if conceding a point to himself in some contentious internal debate. "All right. For the sake of argument, let's say I trust you." A pause; an arched eyebrow. "I don't suppose _she_ asked for me specifically, did she?"

Lee's eyes narrowed, but, as he made to take a step toward the scientist-turned-prophet, Sam stepped forward and effectively blocked him. "No." (He answered for Lee.) "She didn't. Galen Tyrol suggested that we ask you. He thought you might be willing to help us. But maybe he was wrong."

Baltar's eyes grew wide. "Galen Tyrol sent you. Did he, now?" (And then quietly, to himself: "All so fascinating, it is. I really should have seen it, all of it.") He brought his index finger to his lips. "Well, I do suppose, I do suppose it couldn't do any _harm_ for me to take a little vacation from this lovely ship of yours." He pursed his lips and gave a single, short nod. "All right. I'll come on your little secret mission. When do we leave?"


	14. Chapter 14

**A Flash Before the Eyes**

**by cliosmuse  
**

**Chapter 14  
**

Despite all of Tyrol and Tory's bluster over whose car they should take, it was Sam, in the end, who drove. After discovering Starbuck's disappearance, they'd looked for her by foot for an hour. ("I think it's safe to say she doesn't want to be found," was Tigh's verdict.)

They drove on in silence for a time. He had to take it in manual – the traffic grid was experiencing, one might say, a permanent malfunction – and he was grateful that his muscle memory seemed to have retained that particular bit of knowledge. And so he navigated the transport over bodies and downed vehicles, thinking with surprise how easily it glided over the street-level obstacles, and then immediately astonished at how completely he had begun to overlook that those were people, _people_, down there. That his daughter was somewhere down there. (Shock, he told himself. I'm still in shock.)

After a time, Tigh, from the backseat, broke into his reverie. "So, what do you think her game was?"

"You saw how she kept her gloves on," Tory offered by way of rejoinder. "Something was different about her."

Tyrol, beside him, shrugged; his voice was dispassionate – though laced with the eternal curiosity of a scientist. "Well, she knew about my project and the current stage of the program. I can't explain that. It was top-secret."

"She was strange, all right," Tigh slurred by way of conclusion. (If anyone had bothered to check, they might have noticed that the bottle that had been a fixture in his back pocket had been replaced by a new one.)

Sam frowned; punched the dash in anger. "Could you all just stop? She found us all and brought us together. I think we should just be grateful and hope she finds us again."

Tigh snorted. "I don't know why you're so anxious to defend her, Anders. You don't even _know_ her. And if it's just that you want to fuck her –" Anders's icy glare kept him from completing the thought.

"All right, all right." Tyrol. "Calm down, children. Let's just get to Brooklyn and search for signs of life."

The vehicle was silent, then – but for the occasional directions Tyrol muttered towards Anders as they began to approach the park. They were silent, still, as they filed out of the vehicle and toward the unobtrusive hatch on the top of Lookout Hill (passing a body that caused Tyrol to do a double-take: someone he knew, it seemed, someone who had been leaving the facility). And still as they climbed down into the lab space and walked through room after room until Tyrol finally sat before a bay of computers (protected, he explained, by the material that encased the facility) and searched for radio waves, computer networks, satellite transmissions, anything that might suggest the presence of lives other than their own.

At long last, the silence was broken by a single word: "Nothing," he said, as he looked up at them.

* * *

Sam Anders would, of course, see her Kara Thrace again. The next time he met her, he'd fall for her hard and fast. His teammates would mock his unwavering faith that she would return to Caprica for him: what happened to our playboy, Anders? they'd ask. What happened to that guy the _Picon Spectacle_ claimed would never be able to keep his eyes on any woman longer than it took to bed her? It would be a long time before he'd finally be able to explain the draw, because for a long time he wouldn't fully understand it himself.

When Saul encountered Starbuck again on the Battlestar Galactica, his loathing for her would be so instantaneous it would seem almost to predate their meeting. It would certainly have something to do with her personality: so brash, so full of herself. But he'd hate her before he knew these things about her in a way that he couldn't properly justify, and at the same time he'd feel her to be strangely familiar. (Starbuck? Where'd you get that name, anyway?)

When she was first assigned to Galactica, Galen Tyrol's then-girlfriend Sharon would try to introduce him to the spunky new pilot, who was a longtime friend of her ECO. After going out to drink with them once, he'd beg off future engagements. The pretense would be that he was nervous to be seen with Boomer, even in a purportedly friendly capacity, in public. The reality would be very different: there was something about Starbuck that bothered him, intensely. Later, he'd hide his discomfort through strict professionalism: easy enough, since the only times he'd generally see her was when she was bitching at him about her Viper.

But it would be a very long time before any of those things would happen.

* * *

She'd run about two miles when without warning her legs gave way beneath her and she fell to her knees; gloved hands fell, too, splayed on the ground in front of her. On all fours, she breathed hard and fast; concentrated on slowing the movement of her chest so as not to hyperventilate.

For days now she'd been running, as they say, on adrenaline. When she first awoke in the downed Viper, she hadn't known who she was. She'd had a vague notion about what she needed to do, but her past didn't trouble her.

With the blast, she'd remembered, and she'd struggled since not to let her history overwhelm her: she still had things to do. ("They're waiting for me," she heard herself say, again and again, as if on a looping video – and then, as if from a great distance, an anguished scream. And she could only think to herself: "I'm _special_ all right, Mama. Are you happy now?")

So it would be fair to say that her sudden collapse, in Manhattan's Midtown, was likely due to neither her legs nor her lungs. She could have run farther, had trained herself to run many miles before tiring. No: her falter, she would think later, had much more to do with her spirit, or with a sudden exhaustion thereof – and with a rush of memories that after days held back burst forth with fury.

(It was just that she had looked up at the skyscrapers around her and they had looked so suddenly _foreign_ that she couldn't stand it. And that she'd looked down at her jock smock, which she'd been wearing for days, and it had looked so _familiar_ that she'd wanted to scream.)

Now, on all fours, tears threatened but didn't fall. She'd been taught long before, as a very young child, that tears were a wholly inappropriate response to pain. "Frak!" A mutter, a scream, or something in between? Louder, this time: "Frak, frak, _frak_!"

Images bombarded her. A boy – twenty, now, and dark-haired – smiling at her shyly, slyly, from the back of the class. His smile soft, his laugh careless. Refusing, again and again, his entreaties. And then, later, after giving in to his initial advances, rejecting his persistent declarations of love (embarrassed to tell him that he was the first person to ever tell her such things; Socrata certainly never had, had told her just the opposite: that no one would ever, could ever, love her).

She had never said it back, because she was afraid, and also because she didn't know for sure what love felt like and thus couldn't be certain that this thing she felt _was_ love. But nevertheless she had passed him, when he should have failed his flight test, because, after so many years without love, she was terrified beyond reason that he would take it away.

"Where are you now?" she said – aloud, she realized, belatedly, and her voice against the silence jarred her. "Are you somewhere out there?"

Years later, then, another boy, now a man: lighter in complexion, harder around the edges. Where the other had given in to her, caved again and again beneath her self-destructive will, he pushed back, and hard. After years of tumult she'd finally asked him the question she'd been too frightened to ask before, and in doing so she'd put herself at his mercy. And he had given her his answer.

Later, when she'd been feeling particularly alone, she'd asked him about his wife. He'd replied warily at first, and then, because he trusted her (how naïve): "No, things are better than good. Best they've ever been." She threw him a sad laugh. "I'm happy for you. Really." A pause. "It's funny, though. After all we've been through, we are right back where we started. You're a CAG, and I am your hotshot problem pilot. I guess that's all we'll ever be now, hmm?"

Maybe she did know what love felt like. Love, maybe, was letting him go.

But she was Starbuck, and she did little quietly. It had happened so fast: "Kara, I'm coming to get you." Her refusal: "Lee, I'll see you on the other side." A plea: "Kara, please, listen to me. Come back." Left unsaid: to me.

"It's okay. Just let me go. They're waiting for me."

So they were, and there was still one more. Too soon to sleep now. She pushed her hands against the dusty ground until she was up on her knees. And then she bowed her head. "Lords of Kobol, hear my prayer. Watch over the soul of your son Zak Adama –" Her voice caught in a half-sob. "Zak Adama, who loved me." She closed her eyes tightly. "And over the soul of Lee Adama, who told me no."


	15. Chapter 15

**A Flash Before the Eyes**

**by cliosmuse  
**

**Chapter 15  
**

He stood before the mirror in his quarters and stared at his face. He looked old, tired. He hadn't been a young man when the worlds had ended, but the past few years had aged him more than was his due.

From the sofa behind him, a voice. She was curled up under a blanket, a scarf wrapped around her head. The days without diloxin had affected her: prominent rings circled her eyes, and she was battling a bad cough. "Bill, I'm leaving this decision up to you. But I want you to consider the possibility that you may be making a mistake."

He glanced at her, then back to the mirror. Straightened his dress uniform. "I've considered it."

She sighed. "I didn't tell you this before, Bill, because I was ashamed." A protracted pause. He looked back toward her, his brow furrowed with curiosity. "When I was on the Basestar, Baltar was injured, very badly. And I found myself tempted to…." She looked down. "I came very close to hastening his death."

Bill snorted, looking back at the mirror. "Maybe you should have."

She shook her head, emphatically. "But that's just it, Bill. That's what I realized. Elosha came to me, Bill. She showed me my deathbed. And she told me that the harder it is to recognize someone's right to draw breath, the more crucial it is."

He sighed and walked toward the door. "With all due respect, Laura, the situations are very different."

"Because you love her and I hate him? Because by killing her you're punishing yourself most of all?" She studied him. "When this is over, Bill, all you'll have left is your pain. Your pain and a deed that can't be undone."

He sighed. "I've let this go too long. I've staked _everything_ – the Fleet –" He looked down, guilt in his eyes. "Even your life – on my faith that she was telling me the truth. No more. The Fleet needs a strong hand. It needs retribution."

"Is that what this is about, Bill? My death?" There was sadness in her eyes: her own guilt. "Maybe it's not the Fleet that needs retribution. Maybe it's you." Her eyes sought his. "Bill, in my vision of my deathbed…. She was there, Bill."

He bowed his head. "It was only a dream."

* * *

The last time he had participated in a prison break, it had been to ferry the president away from Galactica. Kara was gone, then. Had he allowed himself to think much about it at the time, he would have presumed her dead. But he didn't let himself think about it (or perhaps it was that presumption, subconscious, that allowed him to be so reckless in the first place).

They'd fought, just before she'd left (it was that same fight that had been with him as he drank at Joe's the night before, too). Traded insults and punches. Or perhaps just punches: he'd done most of the insulting, years later still sore and licking his wounds from that stupid frak with the major, but only because it should have been him, should have been him, should have been him, long before she ever even met the major.

And now, here he was, planning another escape, involving another Raptor, on which Gaius Baltar of all people would be a passenger. And what he still needed was a Raptor and a Raptor pilot.

He'd thought about Athena; but her devotion to the Fleet was unwavering, and she had a child. No, Athena would not do. But there was someone else who might.

He found the dark-haired pilot doing a visual inspection of her Raptor, just back from a shuttle run.

"Racetrack."

She didn't look up from the Raptor. "Major."

"It's not 'Major' anymore. You know that."

She grinned into her clipboard. "That's why I didn't salute."

"Maggie, a few years ago I asked you to do something for me. It was illegal and could have gotten you arrested or worse, but you did it."

Her levity was lost on him: his voice was somber. He had her attention. She looked up from her clipboard; threw him a sidelong smile. "I know the difference between right and wrong. I tend to try to keep myself on the better side of that line. Even if it means burning a few bridges."

He sighed. "I'm about to ask you to burn a hell of a lot more than a few."

At last she stood to face him, tucking her clipboard under her arm. "Last time, it was Roslin in the brig. I'm not stupid, Apollo. I know who's there now."

He was silent for a moment, his lips pulled together in a tense line. Finally: "Is that a no?"

A beat before she answered. His eyes were intense, desperate, as they searched hers. "No." A pause. "A lot of people on Galactica have strong feelings about Starbuck. I'm one of them. She's one of the few people in this Fleet that I'd do this for."

His face broke into a confused frown. "Cylon or not?"

She nodded. "Cylon or not." Turned back to the Raptor to finish her inspection. "You Viper pilots are all swagger and competition. It's all about kill stats for most of you. When I first heard Starbuck rag the Pegasus pilots for that, I didn't understand, because it had always seemed to me that that's what flying a Viper was all about." She gazed at the bird; ran a hand over a smooth metal panel. "Flying a Raptor is different. A Raptor pilot's job is more complicated that just killing her enemy. We scout ahead of the Fleet; we do search and rescue. Sometimes, we divert fire. And we might die. When a Viper pilot dies, he becomes a hero. But we Raptor pilots don't die glorious deaths. Our work doesn't attract so much attention, and we generally don't get our names on plaques and our photos on the squadron wall." She looked back at him. "The way I see it, most people in the worlds are either Raptor pilots or Viper pilots. But she's something in between. She's got the skill and loyalty of a Viper pilot, all right. But the difference is that I don't think she's trying to prove anything to anyone but herself. She's given everything she has to this Fleet, over and over. She's always done what she thought was right, consequences be damned."

At first, he couldn't speak. And when he could, a joke: "What's that, pilot philosophy?" He tried to grin, and she returned it, broadly.

"Let's just say that she's grown on me. And that if you need a Raptor pilot, you've got her."

* * *

She looked up as the brig guard stood and saluted her visitor. He looked worn, as old and as tired as she'd ever seen him.

"What do you hear, Starbuck?"

She stood at attention before him. "Nothing but the rain, Sir."

Silence. "Then…." His voice broke. "Kara."

"Yes, Sir?"

He took off his glasses; pinched the bridge of his nose. "I don't have a choice, Kara."

She remained still, hands folded behind her back. "I know that, Sir."

"I've given you chance after chance, Kara. I've wanted to believe you. But the facts before my eyes –"

"You don't need to explain. I understand."

When he spoke again, it was in a harsh whisper, through clenched teeth. "If you could just tell me I'm wrong. Don't make me do this, Kara. Tell me who the last one is, that it's not you."

She shook her head, her eyes wide and sad. "I'm sorry, Sir. I can't."

"Then I can't have you in my Fleet."

They stared at one another through the bars: it was as though, she thought, he was willing her to break. She wouldn't.

He nodded stiffly. "Very well then. Tomorrow morning. Oh eight hundred hours. I'll see you then, Captain Thrace."

* * *

Her hair flipped as she looked over her shoulder at him from where she sat, back against the bars. "It's about time you came to see me, you asshole."

The big man took the lollipop out of his mouth and leaned heavily against the bars; looked down at her. "It's taken me most of the day to work up to it. The last time I felt like this –"

She finished his sentence: "It was Sharon in here."

"This isn't any easier." He turned around and sat heavily on the ground, back against hers. The fingers of his left hand found hers through the bars, tips to tips: barely touching, but reassuringly present.

"Just pretend it's Anthesteria during our first year in the Academy, when I got put in the brig for slugging that triad-playing jackass who made fun of the costume you wore for Choes –"

He smiled. "And we had both lost all our money in two days of nonstop drinking and triad, so I couldn't bail you out."

"So we just sat there, like this, all night. You were still in that stupid costume."

"And then the next day, the guards let you out. They said, 'Out of doors, Kara Thrace! It is no longer Anthesteria.'"

She smiled at the memory. "Why'd we split up again?"

"You cheated on me."

"Oh, yeah. Well, you found someone good."

He swallowed. "So did you."

They sat in silence for some time. At times, she thought she could feel his heartbeat in his fingertips; or maybe it was just her own in her ears.

At last: "Agathon, I need you to do something for me."

"Anything. You know that."

"I need you to find out which airlock. Okay? Which airlock. Then I need you to find Apollo, tell him which one it's going to be, and tell him oh eight hundred. Can you do that?"

His face fell. "Oh eight hundred? Kara, is that –"

"Just do it, Karl. I need you to do this. And I need you to do it tonight."

She thought she felt him nod. Then, the warmth of his fingers was gone from hers, and he was standing and brushing off his uniform slacks. He turned to leave, head bowed. Stood still for a moment. "You know I love you, Thrace. Always will."

She took in his words but didn't respond to them. "I need one more favor, Karl."

"What?"

"Tomorrow morning, when Dee's shift starts. You'll be in CIC together. I want you to tell her: 'Kara says that it wasn't your fault and that she doesn't blame you.'"


	16. Chapter 16

**A Flash Before the Eyes**

**by cliosmuse  
**

**Chapter 16**

Anastasia Dualla carried a gun out of fear, fear that began in a war zone as her family kneeled in wait of an assassin's bullets. She had fired it once, also in fear, at the sight of a dead dog. She remembered the look of the movement from happier days, when they were children and her brother used to shoot cans in the town junkyard, and the feel of it from much later, on a gun range in America as she trained herself to shoot and shoot well; she took the recoil competently, gracefully, and the bullet tore through the dog's eye.

Now, a day and a half later, she was still afraid. She sat on a bench in Battery Park, World War II Memorial looming behind her, and stared at the carcass of the Statue of Liberty. She was free, now, all right. Free from everything but her fear. The gun sat in her lap (hidden beneath the folds of the habit she still wore, though the headpiece had been thrown aside in the first minutes after the blast). Its safety was off. It felt warm in her hand, though she was certain that was only a result of how tightly she had been clutching it.

After her sleepless night in the tunnel, screaming over cockroaches, she had napped earlier on this same bench, but her rest had been fitful. Her ears picked up illusory noises, vague echoes. Her rational mind likened the sounds to the pain of a phantom limb (still felt so real despite its absence) or to the way that, in the absolute darkness, the mind sometimes filled in the black with beautiful shapes and colors. Yes, what noises she heard, she told herself, were her subconscious mind's reactions to sensory deprivation.

By now she had resigned herself to not sleeping. Dark circles ringed the tawny skin beneath her eyes. And so she sat on this bench (playing occasionally with the bizarre flash of lightning that shot between her hand and the bench each time her fingers drew close), thinking about how horrifyingly ironic it was: spared not once but twice from death that had taken everything around her, and neither time grateful.

* * *

After Kara Thrace prayed for the people she had loved and lost, she prayed for herself. Whispered the words in desperate reverence.

"Hermes, messenger to the gods, keeper of boundaries and travelers who cross them, if you could just send me some sign. Explain to me what's happening. I don't understand. I know that I need to collect them, but I don't understand why they're here." She shook her head in confusion. "Are we in Hades? Am I supposed to lead them out? Orpheus tried and failed. How am I supposed to do better?" She slapped the ground in angry frustration. "Frak!"

But then her anger drained, and her face crumpled. Her prayer continued. "Athena, was it you who sent me these messages, about these five? I need you to guide me, like you guided Odysseus on his journey home. I just… I just want to go home." Tears, now, leaving salty tracks along her cheeks. "I don't want to be special. That's what my mother could never understand. I never wanted to be special. I'm just a frak-up, after all."

Silence for some time: no message from the gods. (What did you expect, Thrace, lightning from above? They don't give a frak about you. You're worthless. You're nothing to them.)

She closed her eyes. "I'm scared of what's next."

Wiping, then, the tears from her face with gloved fingers, she pushed herself slowly to her feet. Breathed deeply, head bowed, for several minutes. And then began the last leg of her walk to Battery Park, to find the Fifth.

* * *

A branch cracked behind her, and it was not her imagination. She was on her feet and turned around before she could think, gun out and at the ready. She swung it from side to side as she scanned the park in the late afternoon glow of the sun but saw no one. Only the beady bronze eyes of the World War II Memorial's warring eagle stared back at her. Its splayed wings made it look, for the briefest of moments, as though it moved, and she took a quick step backward.

In a shaking voice, barrel of her gun still tracking rapidly between the huge granite tablets of the memorial (no one left to remember now): "Who's there?"

Very slowly, from behind one of the stone walls, a figure emerged. In the afternoon sunlight, her blond hair seemed to glow with a heavenly fire. The woman from the confessional. To sleep-deprived eyes and a traumatized soul, she looked like an angel of God.

A half-sob escaped her parched throat. "No. You're not here. You can't be here."

The blond woman spoke quickly, forcefully. "Dee, I know you're afraid. But I'm not here to hurt you. I promise you."

Dark brown eyes took on a feverish gleam. "Like you hurt my family? Like you killed my family?" She shook her head from side to side; her eyes held a panicked plea. "Why didn't you take me, too? Why am I still here?"

The other woman raised her hands slowly, showing them empty; sidestepped once, twice, toward the center of the memorial. "I don't know what you're talking about, Dee. I need you to calm down."

"If you're a messenger from God, you can go back and tell Him that I don't want Him. I don't need Him. And I don't need his angels."

"Dee –"

The gun shook violently as she screamed: "That's not my name!"

"Dualla. Anastasia. I have a message for you. But it's not from your god."

Tears coursed down her cheeks. In desperation: "Then who _are_ you?"

She spoke carefully. "There are _others_, Anastasia. Do you understand me?" She paused; breathed deeply, trying to remain calm. "You need to find them. They're waiting for you." Slowly, deliberately, she lowered one of her raised hands toward her pocket, reaching for the notepad.

Dualla's chin quivered, and her eyes shone. The gun shook madly. Later, she would tell herself that it wasn't quite within her control, that she didn't know what had happened. As Starbuck's hand disappeared into the pocket of her suit, two rounds discharged, succinctly, one after the other.

The first bullet hit the woman in the chest.

The second ripped through her throat.

She fell.

Anastasia Dualla looked in shock at the gun in her hand, its barrel slightly smoking. One hand flew to her half-open mouth; the other hand shook violently, its fingers unwilling to let go of the offending trigger. When she could move again, she ran up the steps of the memorial to the body, fallen directly beneath that menacing eagle and its evil eyes; threw herself down (the gun falling beside her, the clatter of it deafening), clamping her hands over the wounds, muttering frantically to herself. "Oh my God. Oh my God. What did I do?" It didn't look quite as bad as she thought it should have for the range, but the damage was still severe. Blood flowed freely around her hands. (Angels don't bleed, do they?) She had seen this much blood once before, on a kitchen floor in a small house in South Africa.

This was not the result of an assassin's bullets, though, but of her own.

Still crouching, she pulled her hands away, red and wet. Lifting the gun from the ground, she wiped it and then her hands on what was left of her habit, leaving behind filthy streaks of copper. And then, carefully, she reached down for the pad that was now clutched in the woman's gloved hand. Read over the message and pocketed the small notebook, and then, as day turned into dusk, made her way back to her church, back to the little room she had inhabited for the past several months. She changed from her blood-soaked smock into the street clothes in which she had first arrived at the church. And then, carefully, she opened the small silicon case underneath her bed and made a quiet exchange: she left behind the gun, and in its place she took her Bible.

Her hands never stopped shaking.

As she made her way to Prospect Park with the last of the light, she didn't cry: she had exhausted all tears. She didn't cry, but she swore to herself and to a God she had killed as surely as she had killed the woman in the park that no one would ever, ever find out what she'd done.

* * *

The morning Kara Thrace was to be airlocked, Karl Agathon found Dee in CIC at oh seven hundred hours.

"Lieutenant Dualla."

No response. She stared too intently at the screen before her, blinking rapidly.

Louder this time: "Dee."

Her head jerked up. She stared at him with nervous eyes. "Yes, Captain?"

He sighed. "Captain Thrace gave me a message for you. She said to tell you –" His face contorted in pain. "She said to tell you that it wasn't your fault and that she doesn't blame you."

She blinked. Her face was a mask of confusion. "She said that?"

Helo nodded, a look of sad resignation on his face. "Does it mean anything to you? Do you know what she's talking about?"

Silence: for Anastasia Dualla, time's continuum had broken down for just a moment; everything slowed to a stop. And then she shook her head slightly, and the moment was over. She looked Helo in the eye. "No. I'm sorry. I don't have the faintest idea."


	17. Chapter 17

**A Flash Before the Eyes**

**by cliosmuse  
**

**Chapter 17**

At oh seven ten, Racetrack once again checked the time impatiently; looked through the Raptor's hatch at Sam, a question in her eyes. She'd already completed the preflight inspection and was only waiting for her passenger.

She had arranged the shuttle trip hastily the previous evening, and, though she didn't particularly think that the good doctor's presence was in any way necessary to rescuing Kara Thrace, she did recognize that their story depended on it.

"Lieutenant Edmondson."

His voice came from behind and caused her to start, but by the time she turned toward him she'd regained her composure. "It's about time, _Doctor_."

He shrugged and adjusted his glasses. "Couldn't be helped. My fans were a little hesitant to let me leave by myself. They're very attentive of me, you know. It can be very difficult to be so –" He paused and brought a finger to his lips, as if searching for the perfect word. "Loved. Yes, that's the word. Dare I say it? So loved." He sighed (in smug self-satisfaction, she thought) and shook his head. "You wouldn't understand, my dear."

She pursed her lips and crossed her arms. "You can call me Lieutenant, Doctor. What did you tell them?"

"I simply told them that they could attend the service on board the – the –"

She glared. "The _Chrion_. Are you even taking this seriously?"

He frowned, and his voice became strident. "I assure you, Lieutenant Edmondson, I am taking this _quite_ seriously. It is simply very _stressful_ for me to –"

"Is there a problem, Doctor?"

They both turned toward the steely voice of Lee Adama. Baltar's eyes dropped to the floor. "No. No problem, Mr. Adama. Unless our _pilot_ here has a problem."

The younger man's eyes narrowed. "Well, that's good to hear. Why don't you go check with Sam about your flight suit." When the doctor had climbed aboard, Apollo turned to Racetrack. "Listen, there's been a slight change of plan –"

A laugh from behind them startled them. "That's right, boys and girls, a change of plan." Turning toward the voice, they were greeted by the mock-sincere face of D'Anna Biers (panic shining in Apollo's eyes). She smiled coyly. "What? You didn't really think I'd let you go to Earth without me, did you?"

* * *

At oh seven-fifteen, the brig guard's phone rang. She listened from where she was seated on her cot, elbows on knees, as he lifted the receiver, placed it to his ear, then hung up. Looking at her: "They're on their way." She lifted her head to look at him, gave a short nod, and looked back down to her clasped hands and, beyond them, her military-issue boots, black leather unpolished, laces askew.

From the neighboring cell, the Cylon, in a whisper: "Kara."

She cut her eyes to him, studied his posture. He was on his knees before the bars that joined their cells, back straight, fingers circling the bars to either side of his face. His eyes looked tired; sad.

"Kara, come here."

Slowly, she stood. Made her way to him. Sat down before him, hands in her lap, legs crossed, like a school child learning from her teacher. He reached one hand through the bars toward her. She didn't take it.

"Kara, I have a gift for you. I know that you've been hurt. I know you haven't always been given the right to choose." He stopped; shook his head, as if chastising himself silently. "No. I mean more than that. I mean to say that I know _I've_ hurt you. I know _I_ haven't always let you choose." More to himself than to her: "Because I misunderstood my role." A beat. "Kara, I intend to return to you what is rightfully yours. I also give you a gift. And you may choose whether or not to accept it."

She frowned, confused. "Leoben –"

He cut her off. "When you return from Earth, you'll find it on the Basestar, guarded by the Centurions. The other models don't know, but the Centurions will show you the way. And if you don't come back, they'll destroy it." He paused; turned his face from hers and closed his eyes; drew a deep breath. After a moment, he looked back toward her, and when he spoke again it was with deliberate emphasis: "Kara, you _may_ choose what to do when you find it."

She turned away, uttering a harsh laugh, the look on her face dismissive. "Enough with the melodrama, okay? I'll be back. So how about this. When I do come back, you can give it to me yourself." Feigning an assurance she did not feel.

His eyes blazed; the hand that he had extended through the bars, which had until then floated between them, miming a caress from a distance, shot forward in a flash and gripped her shoulder. He spoke with a quiet intensity through clenched teeth. "No! Kara. _Kore_. My vision goes dark at this point, and I've realized why. You were right before. I won't be able to complete your journey with you. I was only meant to lead you this far."

Panic lit her face, and she shook her head to dispel it. "No. No, you're not. Leoben, I need you to –"

He squeezed her shoulder tightly (and the grip would leave a bruise: something to remember him by). He spoke in a rush. "This is what I need to tell you, Kara. Your whole life you have felt incomplete, empty. You've sought ways to fulfill yourself, but you've sought that fulfillment through empty pleasures and pain. Now is the time to stop searching, _Kore_. Now is the end of suffering. Come out into the light. I've told you before: you are an angel. You shine with God's light. Look into His face. The task is yours, and you are ready to fulfill your destiny."

"Captain Thrace." She broke their gaze and looked toward the several marines who had entered the brig.

_He_ was mysteriously absent. (Both of them, in fact – but it was the older Adama she had expected to see and whose absence stung of disdain, of rejection.)

She looked back toward Leoben. His hand dropped from her shoulder; moved toward her face, and she felt for the briefest of moments his fingers on her cheek. "Goodbye, Kara."

Looking back to the guards, she pushed herself to her feet, then. Turned her back to the bars and allowed them to restrain her arms.

As the door slid open, she threw one final look to the Cylon. "I'll see you soon."

What she would later remember about him most vividly was that sad smile and those knowing eyes, eyes that asked: Lie or wishful thinking, Kore?

* * *

At oh seven twenty, Lee Adama had run into a problem. He stood up straight, suddenly conscious of his slight stature aside the towering Cylon. "With all due respect, Ms. Biers," he began, his tone clipped, "This Raptor is simply making a shuttle run to the Chrion to transport Doctor Baltar to a speaking engagement."

She narrowed her eyes (gave an unconscious tug at the lapels of her black leather coat). "With all due respect, Mr. Adama: do you think I'm stupid?"

He looked around the hangar nervously, conscious of attracting attention. "Just what exactly are you trying to accomplish here?"

She rolled her eyes and smiled slyly. In a careless drawl: "Oh, come on, Apollo. I don't want your little girlfriend to get airlocked anymore than you do. On the contrary, I think we can all agree that that would be a terribly unfortunate end to this little journey of ours. No, Apollo, all I want right now is a ride down to that rock." She jutted out her lip in a slight pout. "That's not really so much to ask, is it?"

He raised an eyebrow. "Or what?"

"Or her execution suddenly comes to seem much, much more likely." She smiled. "Now, why don't you let me go in and join the dear doctor? Something tells me he's missed me."


	18. Chapter 18

**A Flash Before the Eyes**

**by cliosmuse  
**

**Chapter 18**

Starbuck was awakened with a start by the feeling of cold rain on her cheeks. She was lying on concrete, her arms splayed to her sides. Awkwardly, she rolled herself from her back to her stomach; coughed violently, causing pain to shoot through chest and throat. She pushed herself to her elbows and with one hand touched her neck, gingerly. Unbroken flesh met the fingertips of her gloves.

She closed her eyes and shook her head. "Oh, frak me."


	19. Chapter 19

**A Flash Before the Eyes**

**by cliosmuse  
**

**Chapter 19  
**

The marines led her, hands bound, down the corridor. She felt acutely aware of her surroundings (the sound of metal beneath her unpolished, untied boots; the whistle of a soldier's breath beside her; the orange glow of the passage lights; the feel of restraints against tender wrists).

The marine at the front spoke into a wireless transmitter; the one-sided report of her impending execution made her feel strangely far away. (Floating.)

"Prisoner is secure." Pause. "Transferring to airlock eight." Pause. "Yes, sir."

Airlock eight. She matched them step for step; knew the twists and turns of the ship's corridors as well as they did and saw no reason to delay her arrival.

The walk seemed to her to take longer than it must have in reality.

When she arrived, he was standing before the open airlock, arms clasped behind his back. His eyes fixed on the first marine. "Remove her restraints."

She nodded to him as the marine unlocked her, met his gaze directly. "Good morning, Sir. I wondered when you'd join us. It seemed like it'd be a shame to miss the party."

His eyes fell to the floor, then: just for a moment, but she caught it. "Do you have anything you'd like to tell me, Kara?"

"Nothing I can think of, Sir." A beat. "But there is something I wanted to give back to you." She paused, and then she was reaching into her pocket and slipping something small, bronze into his hand. Aurora. "I think you might need it more than I will."

Anger flared in his eyes, and he looked away from her to the small figurine in his outstretched palm. His fingers closed over it, and, as she watched, his knuckles turned white. He looked back up to her. "Guards."

Two marines flanked her and led her into the small docking station; then, guns raised and directed toward her, they backed past the line where the airtight doors would come together, protecting the ship as she was vented into space. She turned her eyes toward the ceiling above her and said a small prayer to the gods she worshiped that the timing would be right.

And then the admiral appeared in the control room that overlooked the airlock. With a nod of his head, the doors began to close.

The last thing she heard from outside the airlock before the airtight panels came together with a clang was Lee's voice, strident, angry: "_Admiral_."

Her eyes went wide, darted between the admiral (in that glassed-in room) and the closed vent doors in panic.

This wasn't the way it was supposed to happen.

Apollo – no longer just a disembodied voice – appeared in the control room; she stared at him, and her gaze was a mixture of confusion, betrayal, and fear. Through the reinforced glass screen, she saw the admiral, in profile, look toward his son and then close his eyes; his eyes turned down. Guilt.

She watched as Lee looked rapidly back and forth between the airlock and his father. His eyes blazed. His lips moved rapidly; his face was red; he gesticulated wildly. She closed her eyes tightly. (Can't be happening, can't be happening. Something's gone wrong.) When she opened them, he was pointing fiercely at her, the movement of his lips articulating a simple demand: Let me say goodbye.

She closed her eyes again, willed the world away, and didn't open them again until she heard the doors creaking open. And then there was Lee, walking toward her slowly; tentatively reaching his hands toward hers, clasping them in his. From outside the airlock, a marine's sturdy voice: "You have two minutes." As the doors closed behind them, she glanced at the control room: the admiral was turned away, head bowed. Shame.

He squeezed her hands. His eyes held hers. "So here we are."

She looked at him in shock; shook her hands free from his, shaking her head. "Lee, what are you doing here?" In a harsh whisper: "You're supposed to be in the Raptor. What happened? Did something go wrong?"

He cocked his head; shook it side to side, strangely calm. "No. Nothing's wrong." He walked away from her, slowly, toward the wall of the airlock, and with a flip of his wrist, he had engaged the airlock doors' manual override. "I just couldn't let you do this alone." He looked back over his shoulder at her and threw her a small grin. "After all, how could I ever live that down?"

Not betrayal, then. Something more terrifying. She was close to tears; she shook her head: "Lee, I can't lose you."

Fiercely: "And I can't lose you." A beat. "Are you ready? We don't have much time. They'll override that manual lock in a minute, tops."

Her eyes were focused solely on him (she would not, could not look back into that control room, would never know how long it took them to realize what had happened)."You are beyond insane."

He reached his hand out for her, and she took a step toward him, reached hers out to clasp his, tightly, a death grip. His other hand returned to the control panel on the wall, hovering over the red button that would vent them into dark, cold space. "I love you."

She closed her eyes, let it wash over her, a hint of a smile on her lips. "I believe you."

He looked back and forth between the red button and their joined hands once, twice. "Are you ready?" She nodded. His next words weren't spoken to her: "Is the Raptor in position?" Whatever he heard made him nod in relief. In one swift movement, he pulled her into him, released her hand, and tucked his arm tightly around her waist. A whisper: "Close your eyes and hold your breath. It'll be over before you know it." And he pressed the red button.

Elsewhere on Galactica, Galen Tyrol bounced his son on his knee and smiled.

* * *

It was rare that the admiral lost control of himself.

But now, as he stormed into the brig, his rage radiated. He marched directly to the cell holding the Cylon; found him kneeling in the middle of its concrete floor, as if in prayer. A quick nod of his head, and a guard slid back the door. Three steps, and he was upon him. His left hand shot out, grabbed a fistful of the hair on top of his head, pulling the machine upright; in his right hand was his gun, its barrel already pressed to the Cylon's forehead.

Through gritted teeth: "Any last words, Leoben?" He nodded his head toward the guards. "The wireless is on. She can hear you."

The Cylon looked at him; smiled slightly. "I think she knows what I would say."

Fire in Adama's eyes, and a harsh whisper. "This was your fault. This has always been your fault. Her depression before her suicide: your fault. This obsessive quest to find Earth: your fault. What I almost did, what could have just happened: _your fault_. It's _always_ been your fault. You've used her like your plaything since the beginning. You've used all of us. Why did you do it? Do you think this is funny?"

Leoben closed his eyes. "Everything I did I did because I loved her." There was a time, on New Caprica and before, when he would have said this without its being true: he didn't, then, know what love was. Now, he thought, he did. To love something was to set it free. "And I'm not afraid to die." His eyes opened, bore into the admiral's; in a flash, his hand flew up to grip the barrel of the gun, pressing it hard against flesh and bone. "Do it. Do it, you coward. _Do it!_"

The gunshot rang out over the wireless. "No! No!" She pushed herself frantically away from Lee, away from the spot where they had fallen together in a heap of flesh and bone, heedless of the blood streaming down her hairline from her impact with the deck of the Raptor. Oxygen deprivation and cold made her voice come out in an angry rasp. And now, her mouth open, horror in her eyes, her hand reaching, lamely, toward the ship's radio, she knelt on splayed knees, rocking back and forth. As if willing the past to change: "No, no, no."

The others watched her dumbly, uncertain of how to respond and lacking the energy to do so – and baffled by her pain. When neither her husband nor her lover – both seemingly frozen in place – went to her, it was the doctor, pulling away from D'Anna, who stepped forward, took Starbuck's outstretched hand in his, and gently lowered it to her side. "Captain Thrace… Kara. It's too late. It's over. We've got to leave." He turned to their pilot. "Racetrack, shall we go to Earth?"

* * *

In the brig, eyes closed, standing before a broken body the soul of which may or may not have made it to God. Gun still in his right hand; left hand pinching the bridge of his nose beneath his spectacles. He took a shuddering breath. "Mr. Gaeta?"

The wireless intercom crackled. "Yes, sir?"

"Has the rest of the Fleet been apprised of the new set of FTL coordinates?"

Some static, and then: "Yes, Sir. All are ready and on standby."

"Then, Mr. Gaeta, prepare the Fleet to jump."

* * *

The president gave him an hour before she went after him. Knocked gently on the hatch. When there was no answer, she let herself in.

His quarters were unrecognizable. Papers were strewn across the floor. Furniture was tossed about haphazardly, the leg of a chair broken in half. The stink of ambrosia filled her nostrils: the source she quickly discerned from the stain on the wall, the glass shattered on the floor. And his model ship – that thing of beauty that he built and rebuilt and which had in most recent memory been awaiting yet another rebuilding due to recent damage – had been smashed into thousands of bits: finally, clearly, beyond repair.

And then she heard the sound, a low keening. She made her way to the head, pushed open the door, and there he was. "Oh, Bill."

He sat on the floor, underneath the sink, his legs pulled in tightly to his chest, his cheeks still splattered with the Cylon's blood. His eyes were closed; his teeth were clenched. And he was sobbing.


	20. Chapter 20

**A Flash Before the Eyes**

**by cliosmuse  
**

**Chapter 20  
**

"So, tell me, Kara Thrace, why exactly did she do this to you?"

Kara had not spoken since the gunshots rang over the wireless, but for her initial plaintive denials of their reality. She sat with her back against the empty paneling beside the ECO's station, arms propped on bent knees, hands dangling limply, eyes staring vacantly ahead. Sam had tried to approach her, but at the look she shot him, he had rejoined Racetrack in the front of the bird. Lee lay curled on the far side of the Raptor's small floor space from her, his arms wrapped around his chest, wheezing slightly with each breath. He didn't come near her for comfort (felt strangely far away despite the dearth of interior space), though physically their pain was the same. It was – as it always, always was – her other pain, perpetually just beyond his grasp, that kept him at bay.

At her question, Starbuck, without moving, turned narrowed eyes up to D'Anna, who sat next to Gaius at the ECO's console. But when the Cylon didn't flinch, she sighed. "She thinks –" Her voice was a low rasp. "She thinks she killed me."

The Cylon smiled. "Well, now. That would be traumatic for anyone, wouldn't it?"

* * *

When Ana had first arrived in Brooklyn out of the chaos that was southern Africa at the turn of the 22nd century, she had been taken, strangely, by the _stillness_ of the place. Brooklyn was not a place most would have taken for calm: in the past two decades, it had experienced rapid population growth, primarily due to the influx of expatriates from the Southern States after the Second Civil War, when the country had been cleaved in two. But while she might be one of the few to characterize the neighborhood as calm, in a borough of four and a half million, Ana was perhaps not the only person who felt alone.

In those very early days, when she felt more acutely alone than she would later, she often came here, to this particular bench in Prospect Park, to think, to meditate, to watch mothers talk, to watch children and pets (_dog, dead dog_) play.

Ironic, then, that during all those visits, all those hours of watching, she had been staring, unseeing, at the very hill at the top of which was the hatch to which the blond woman's small (blood-stained) pad held directions.

Now, as she sat, she still thought. But this time, it was not about her mother or her brother or the church. As she sat, she tried to think of how she might possibly explain her presence to the people the woman had said were here, still alive. How to explain her presence without telling how the gun in her hand had accidentally gone off not once but twice. How to explain her presence without describing the blood that had seeped from the wounds, the blood that was still on the skirts she left in her room at the church.

It was with a great deal of relief, then, that, after a few hours spent running her fingers absently over the too-familiar grooves of that bench as dusk gave way to darkness, she saw movement. Movement and a glint of light.

At first, she thought her eyes were playing tricks on her (though reminded herself that they hadn't been at Battery Park; that the vision that she thought at first was merely the invention of an addled brain had been flesh and blood, blood, blood). But then, the sliver of light became a dull beam as the metal hatchway was thrown back and a the possessor of the beam of light climbed out. The beam danced in the darkness for a time. It passed by her once and then rapidly shot back to her. All she could see was light – almost painful despite the weakness of the glow – and she held a hand up to shield her eyes. From behind the beam, a gravelly, masculine voice: "What in the hell..."

She swallowed; sat up straighter and lowered her hand slightly. "I... I thought I was all alone. I... I came here to sit. I used to come here a lot. Are you... are you alone?"

"Well, I'll be damned." The beam dropped to the ground as the figure made its way toward her. He sat beside her on the bench. In the diffuse lighting of the forgotten flashlight (which he sat between them on the old wood), she could now see his face. He was in his forties, she thought, with sandy hair and slightly sunken eyes. As she watched him, he pulled a bottle out of his pocket, shook his head, and repeated in amazement: "I'll be damned." Then he slouched down into the bench next to her, studied for a minute the contents of the bottle, and, throwing his head back, downed a deep swig. "So, where'd you come from?"

She couldn't take her eyes off him; swung herself around to face him (he still watched his bottle), studying his face with wide eyes. "I... nowhere in particular. I've just been... wandering. Just... last night I stayed in the Battery Tunnel. The night before that I slept in someone's home. But there was a dog..." She trailed off.

His eyes cut toward her briefly. "You see anyone else?" Another swig.

"No. No, nobody." She shivered slightly (even beneath the thick jacket she had taken from her room). Whether from the cold or her lie, she wasn't quite sure.

"Well, we've got a few here. Had another before she cut and ran. I don't expect she'll be back." He paused. "They say we can't stay here. Say the Earth is poisoned, now. That we'd be better off taking our chances in space. Would you believe that?" He laughed bitterly to himself. "I'll take you down in a little bit. I just came out for a –" He raised his bottle and grinned mirthlessly toward her. "A nightcap."

They sat in silence for a few minutes, Anastasia not certain of just what to say to the man (the drunk) who sat beside her. She certainly didn't see in him any hope of a better tomorrow.

After a time, he capped his bottle and put it back in his pocket. As he moved to rise, he caught sight of the book by her side, its cover illuminated in the light. He grunted a laugh. "You believe that crap?"

She looked down at her lap; felt the emptiness of the past few days weighing on her, squeezing the life out of her, felt herself to be devoid of – all. She choked slightly with the rush of sorrow. "No. Not really, no."

He nodded, as if in satisfaction. "I'm Saul, by the way."

"I'm An –" She stopped short. Took a breath. Said the next thing that came to her mind. It was: "People call me Dee."

* * *

Starbuck coughed violently for a few minutes. The pain was deep, but the skin was firm. "Frak me," she said, again, louder this time, as if daring somebody to respond.

"Would you like that?"

She started; her head shot up. "Leoben?" His arms were crossed; he leaned against the bronze eagle. Without a word, he took two steps toward her; squatted, reached down toward her; took her hand and brought her to her feet (_this has happened before, _she thought, _this has happened in –_)

"The space between life and death."

She swallowed. Her eyes were wide, unguarded. "Is that where I am? Is that where all of this is?"

He looked around. "You could say that."

Her lip quivered. "Why am I still here? I just want to –" Her face crumpled, and she blinked back tears. "I just it to be over."

He reached out and touched her cheek. "Kara. Kara." He smiled. "This world can't touch you, Kara. And it's too soon for that, besides. Far, far too soon for that. You have work to do." And she nodded because she trusted him.


	21. Chapter 21

**A Flash Before the Eyes**

**by cliosmuse  
**

**Chapter 21**

It was evening on the day of Kara Thrace's execution when Saul Tigh approached the admiral's quarters. He did so with some hesitation: no one aside from the president had seen Adama since morning, and, if that weren't enough, during his last extended interaction with his commanding officer, the two men had come to blows. He stood for a moment and then knocked quietly on the hatch.

"Come."

He took a breath; opened the door. Adama was standing in front of his desk, holding in his hand a framed photograph. In the photo, a much younger William Adama (that William Adama had been called Husker) stood in his flight suit with two small boys in front of a Viper. Saul cleared his throat. "You wanted to see me, Bill?"

Adama glanced up. "How are things in CIC?"

Saul shrugged, shifting nervously from foot to foot. "I wouldn't really know. I haven't really been there today."

"Saul."

He took a moment before speaking. "People are talking, Bill. They know what happened, more or less. They're confused. They want to know about Earth and about Starbuck. They want to know where we're going."

Adama sighed. He replaced the photo on his desk and lifted his glass (refilled often today), then walked toward his leather sofa, stepping over scraps of debris still scattered about the office from the morning, and sat down. "And what should I tell them, Saul? Should I tell them that Earth was a nuclear wasteland? Should I tell them that I have intelligence that suggests that Kara – who led them into battle, who they _trusted_ – may have given away our location to the Cavils, the Dorrals, the Simons? One hundred twenty three jumps, Saul. It took us one hundred and twenty three jumps to get to Earth after we found D'Anna. Am I supposed to tell them we've in all likelihood been followed?"

Tigh was a silent. Then carefully, carefully, he made his way to the chair opposite Adama; sat down. "Bill, do you really believe that Starbuck would do something like that?"

The admiral frowned. "I've got to. If I don't – then I almost killed her for nothing."

An attempt at levity: "Oh, come on now, Bill." He tried to grin. "Since when is being a Cylon nothing?"

Adama didn't smile; merely pinched the bridge of his nose. "Since I found out you were one." A beat. "Should a man be held accountable for what he is, or for the things that he does?"

"Believe me, Bill. I haven't been able to think about much else for a long time, now."

The admiral poured his friend (the Cylon) a drink, and they sat for a time, lost in their thoughts, drinks in their hands, the way they would have twenty years ago, when they were younger men.

"So –" Tigh cleared his throat. "Do we know who else was on the Raptor, yet?"

Bill glanced at him. "Racetrack signed out the Raptor, supposedly to transport Gaius Baltar to a ceremony he was officiating. He never arrived and at this point is thought to be missing. I suppose we can assume that the two of them were on it, then."

Tight nodded. "Anyone else?"

"Sam Anders was absent from a midday roster meeting. And the Cylons say that the Three – D'Anna – is missing from the Basestar. They're getting anxious. They think we're holding her prisoner." Saul watched him, but the admiral didn't notice: his eyes were on his glass. He swirled the acrid liquid in the glass once, twice. "When I saw my son walk toward that manual override button, everything stopped for a minute. And then they put their heads together. I felt like I was intruding, watching them through the glass. But I stared: it was all I could do." He took a quick sip, felt the burn of it down his throat. "The first thing I thought was that he'd be the second son I'd lost because of her."

"And the next thing?"

"That I deserved it. That I deserved to be alone in this universe. That I deserved to suffer." He coughed, covering his embarrassment. "Laura told me that, when it was over, all I'd have left was my pain. She was right. She always is. They may not be gone – they may be down there, on that rock somewhere. But I've lost them. Just as surely as if I'd pushed that button myself."

The Cylon shook his head. "Not for good, Bill. Not for good. Children come back. They always do."

Again, then, silence, before he broke and asked the question he'd been wanting to since the moment he found out: "What's it like? Being a Cylon?"

"What's it like?" His laugh came out as a harsh bark, and he shrugged. "You might as well ask what it's like being human. I don't know. It just is."

* * *

Dualla sat in her rack, curtain drawn. All day she had been going through the motions in CIC, paying just enough attention to get by – to not kill anyone.

That morning, Starbuck had escaped, with Apollo. And she was glad, glad, glad. But for that, and it would have been twice that she had killed her.

Now alone, she stared at her hands, palms open before her. (_Blood, blood on my hands._)

In her mind's eye, the interplay of two images, rapidly, bouncing off one another.

In the first, she knelt beside Starbuck, dying on the ground in New York City. Her hands pressed into her chest, into her neck. Too late, too late. Life flowing out.

In the second, she knelt by the commander's son on Cloud 9. Blood seeped from a bullet hole in his chest; there was fear in his eyes. Her eyes for the briefest moment met Starbuck's as the pilot ran out the door, and she saw in the dark pupils every emotion that she had now forgotten she once felt. Her own desperate ramblings, then: "I can't stop the bleeding. I've got to stop the bleeding." Words that she may or may not have uttered long before.

And then, before she knew what was happening, Billy, dead on the floor behind her.

In her rack, now, her hands, open before her, began to tremble. She squeezed them into fists, but still they shook. Moisture on her cheek; she batted the tear away.

In an instant it had become clear to her why what had at first been such a simple infatuation had become for her, so suddenly, something much, much more. (In sickbay afterward: "Lee, you can't leave. You have to stay. You have to really stay.")

Because _him_ she had been able to save. Through Lee Adama, she had first tried to atone.

* * *

Laura Roslin awoke with a start. She was lying in a bed in sickbay. Tests, she remembered. She was getting back tests. She looked around and spotted Cottle at the far end of the room. "Doctor?"

He looked over his shoulder, cigarette dangling from his mouth. "Well, it's about time. And don't go thinking you can take my free beds for your nap-time every day. You make a habit of this, and I'll send you right back where you came from, president or not."

Laura shook her head, trying to clear it. "I –"

"You fell asleep while you were waiting for these results is what you did. Merciful soul that I am, I didn't have the heart to wake you." He narrowed his eyes at her. "How have you been sleeping lately?"

She squeezed her eyes shut and shook her head slowly. "Dreams, all the time, such vivid dreams."

Cottle grunted. "Well, I guess that would explain all the mumbling you were doing over there. I've never heard such a racket in my life."

Her eyes widened. "Doctor – Doctor Cottle, what was I saying?"

He shrugged. "All I caught was something about an opera house."


	22. Chapter 22

**A Flash Before the Eyes  
**

**by cliosmuse**

**Chapter 22  
**

The ship was called Apollo.

Born on the one hundredth anniversary of Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin's moonwalk, Galen Tyrol had as a young boy pored over storybooks about the early space missions; he always knew this was his destiny. Now, in a hangar bay far below the surface of the Earth, Tyrol touched his hand to the hull of the huge ship, _his_ ship. He knew by heart every nook and cranny. The concept for the craft, the physics behind it, was his, and he had played the primary role in fundraising for the project; but he had also had a significant hand in the architecture and engineering that went into the vessel itself. A whisper: "It's all I've got left."

"You say something, Chief?"

Snapped out of his reverie, he jumped a bit before responding to Saul Tigh. "No, nothing." A beat. "And don't call me that. I don't like it."

Tigh let out a rueful chuckle. "Why the hell not, Doc? Are you or are you not in charge around here these days?"

Tyrol didn't bother responding, merely began again the task that had been interrupted: checking every inch of the ship against the original plans, going over the work logs for the recent weeks, and running computer diagnostics on her systems.

"So you're telling me this heap of metal is airworthy?" Tigh, again, from behind him.

Tyrol shrugged. "I guess we'll find out, won't we?"

Tigh looked around the hangar at the others. Tory and Anders reposed underneath scaffolding that offered access to one angled plane of the ship. Dee sat in the corner of the room by herself, legs pulled into her chest, her eyes distant, a troubled expression on her face. Tigh narrowed his eyes; the next words he spoke to the professor were loud enough for the other three to hear distinctly, verging on the combative: "So what's it worth to you, Chief? Finding out if this thing will fly? Is it worth our lives? What the hell are we doing here?"

"If we stay here we will die." Sam, his voice a flat monotone. "Humanity will die."

"We don't know that."

Sam shook his head in frustration. "I've told you before, it's not hereditary, this thing we can do." As if in demonstration, he played his hand over the screen of a small music player that sat beside him, left undoubtedly by some knuckledragger before the bomb. It whirred to life, skipped between a few tracks frenetically (the sound startling in the huge room), and abruptly turned off. He brought his hand back to his lap. "If it was, my daughter wouldn't be dead."

Tory shrugged. "Not necessarily. It could be a recessive trait."

Tigh: "Right, right. Or a mutation, something that happened after the kid was born."

Tory nodded. "After all, nature wouldn't select for a trait that wasn't able to be passed along, would it?"

Sam laughed bitterly. "Nature didn't select for this. The people with the bombs did."

The professor shook his head, not looking up from his checklist. "As impressed as I am that you all seem to have remembered a bit of your introductory biology, none of this changes the much more fundamental fact that there's no food. Besides the stockpile down here, everything's been flash fried, including the stuff in cans. There are no plants and no animals. And even those char-broiled blueberry muffins we ate on the way here will have rotted or turned to dust before too long." He paused. "It also doesn't change the fact that Starbuck said we might be able to find other people."

Tigh scoffed. "'Starbuck said this, Starbuck said that.' You sound like a broken record. How you think you can believe a word of the garbage that Looney Tune spouted is beyond me."

Galen's head shot up; his eyes were angry. "Look, the star charts she drew were –"

"She was telling the truth."

They all looked, agog, at Dee. She had barely spoken a word since she'd arrived with Tigh the previous night (mostly listened wide-eyed to their plan).

Tigh: "And how the hell would you know?"

Dee swallowed. "I – I met her. A – a few days before the explosion. A woman like the one you described came to my church. I heard her confession. She said –" She paused, trying to think back, to recall her fear. "She said that she'd been told to find me. She said that she had a duty to fill, a role to play, and that she didn't want it. I'm sure it was her." She looked at them plaintively. "And I know she was telling the truth."

Sam narrowed his eyes at her. "You – was it you she went to find? When she left?"

Dee met his gaze evenly. In her hand, she squeezed Kara Thrace's small notepad tightly. "I don't know. I never saw her again."

* * *

Elsewhere in the City, Kara Thrace took a step back, dusted her hands off, and examined her creation. Gallons of paint of all colors sat around her feet. (Many of those remaining in the store through the Tunnel had exploded in the blast, leaving her with a somewhat limited selection; nonetheless, she had taken what she could get, a lovely if unconventional array.) A chisel and mallet dangled from her hands.

No longer were the tablets of the war memorial dull grey. On each of them, now, were elaborately chiseled words and painted scenes. (Was this a sacrilege? she wondered. Were the dead soldiers named here screaming out their anguish in the Elysian Fields?) The words and images were a tableau of her life: they were hot and cold, good and evil, picture and poetry, prophesy and heresy, celebration and devastation. Behind her stood Leoben – this Leoben who once again seemed to exist only in her mind. He took in the whole scene.

"It's wonderful. It's vital. It's you. Do you feel better?"

She didn't look at him. "I feel purged."

"You've left your mark here, now."

"It will fade over time. Everything does."

"Perhaps."

She heard steps, then, and felt, for just an instant, the firm pressure of a hand on her waist, hot breath on the back of her neck. A whisper: "Kara."

Her voice was no more than a sigh, air through the reeds. "Yes?"

"Are you still afraid? Afraid of the unknown? Afraid of death?" In her mind, she saw her mother. She shook her head slowly. "When you finally face it, Kara, it's beautiful."

"No, I –" But the hand was gone. His breath was gone. And when she turned around, he was gone as well.

* * *

Exhausted and alone, she went back to the only place she could think of, where it had all started.

It didn't take much time. The distance wasn't too far, but the tunnel she had to walk through was dark and hard to navigate, littered with bodies and cars.

The entire park was cordoned off around the Viper. Not surprising that they would have been confused, frightened by it. She walked around it; stroked it from nose to tail. She wiped a stray tear from her cheek; then she hoisted herself up onto the wing, lowered herself into the the cockpit: looked through the windscreen around the devastated landscape.

And then the view shifted, and she was no longer looking at grey sky and broken trees but a shimmering blue river, green fields on the shore opposite stretching for miles. Across the water, a solitary figure walked down the beach. His shirt-sleeves were rolled up to his elbows, pants-legs to his calves. The water lapped around his toes. His head was cocked, his hands balled in his pockets. And he smiled.

She gasped, reached her hand out toward the windscreen of the Viper. Pain across her face. Her voice just a breath: "Zak? Is it you? How can you be here?"

"I'm here because you need me to be here." His face was calm, peaceful. "Don't be afraid. It's the only way, Kara. It's the only way you can go home." A beat. "And Kara? I don't blame you. I would never, ever blame you."

And as she watched, the vision grew fainter until it vanished before her eyes. "No! No!" Her hand, still extended, jutted forward to capture the mirage but was met only by the jagged edges of the broken windscreen. She pulled back and watched as her hand bled.

And bled.

And the wound did not close.

Then she knew what she had to do. Eyes still trained on the spot in the grey field where Zak had stood, where the water had splashed around his ankles, she reached her bleeding hand under the seat of the Viper and pulled from beneath it the gun that was stowed there.

And, saying a prayer to the gods, she put the gun in her mouth and pulled the trigger.


	23. Chapter 23

**A Flash Before the Eyes  
**

**by cliosmuse  
**

**Chapter 23**

They would go to sleep, Tyrol told them. _If we can't speed up flight, we slow down the body. Stasis_, he explained. The heart rate would slow. Oxygen would be supplied intravenously, eliminating the need for breath. Caloric requirements in this limited state would be drastically reduced. _And while we're asleep, the ship follows the charted course_.

_For how long?_ Tigh wanted to know. _How much juice has this thing got?_

_The ship is powered by a self-sustaining nuclear reaction, and it periodically deposits reaction waste into empty space. The oxygen supply recycles. Theoretically, this ship could run a thousand years._

_Theoretically?_

* * *

It didn't go as planned. But then again, very few things do. It was a simple glitch, really. The life support system had a built-in safeguard that was designed to wake them up, briefly, once a year so that they could take a few days to make assessments regarding the ship and their own health and to correct course before returning to stasis – or, ultimately, completing their journey. It failed.

It was eight-hundred seventy one years later when the Cylons intercepted the Apollo, ten years after the end of the First Cylon War.

Their efforts to create humanoid life had until then been less than successful. The DNA of the Colonials had led to promising experiments, as early as the war, that had given birth to a first type of life: the hybrid. The hybrids were powerfully intelligent; they soon came to command not only the Cylon ships but also the Centurions themselves. But while they were mentally agile, their bodies were fragile, best kept in a dream state, bathed in womb-like waters.

The machines that scouted the Apollo looked at the Five, resting in their coffin-like apparatuses. Around them, they found texts written in a strange language (though one that was readily decipherable, stemming as it did from a Latinate base): star charts, ship schematics, one solitary copy of a holy text called _Bible_, the book, which spoke of a single God, and a small, tattered notepad. The hybrids searched the Sacred Scrolls of the Colonials for some clue as to who these creatures were. They decided that they must be from Earth.

In the end, the ship proved to offer all the Cylons needed to create their master race. They pillaged the bodies and souls of Earth's children. Stasis technology and bodies which were capable not only of conducting but also of harnessing electricity: the final two ingredients necessary to giving life to a humanoid that could be born and born again into new, preserved bodies.

* * *

They pillaged the bodies and souls of Earth's children, but in the process they themselves became human. And, being human, they knew sympathy, and they resolved to set their parents, their progenitors, the givers of life – who had been asleep all these hundreds of years – free.

The hybrids sent Saul Tigh to the Colonies first, as a deckhand on a commercial freighter, the same freighter on which he would eventually meet William Adama. ("Any kids?" Bill Adama would ask him when they met. He would laugh harshly. "Are you kidding me? No way.") They gave him memories of a childhood on Aerelon, of fighting in the First Cylon War, of learning to fly a Viper. They gave him memories of war, of blood, of death. He was a troubled man on Earth; the memories they offered fed into his nature and would make him an equally troubled man on the Colonies.

After the war, a remote space station had been built where the warring races could meet and maintain diplomatic relations. Each year, the Colonials sent an officer. The Cylons sent no one.

Each year after Tigh's deployment, however, the hybrids took advantage of the visit from a safe distance to comb the electronic signals of the diplomat's ship while he was aboard the space station for any news that might suggest that their own diplomat was not fitting in.

And each year, they were pleased that they heard nothing.

It was over two decades, when the prototypes for the humanoids were fully developed and the hybrids were completely satisfied by Tigh's _humanity_, before the Cylons sent the rest. Their pasts were designed to blend into their memories, to play to their skills.

Sam Anders had always been a natural athlete. On Earth, he had been a prizefighter and a blues musician. He was a man who was good with his hands. On the Colonies, he began to play pick-up pyramid with some of the guys in the neighborhood where he had just moved. He was good, really, really good. One of the guys knew a guy who knew a guy, and pretty soon a scout had been called out to watch a weekend game. Sam was drafted after being on the Colonies for only four months.

Tory Foster had been the vice president of one of (she was fond of reminding others) the largest financial houses in Greater China. She was a natural organizer, a skilled manager. With memories of all the previous political campaigns she had played her role in, she easily landed a job in the campaign office of a middling Federalist candidate for the People's Council from Delphi. He won in a landslide. Her career was set.

Anastasia Dualla had suffered on Earth the most of them all. When she was sent to the Colonies, she was sent bearing the intention of enlisting immediately in the Colonial Fleet Reserve, with memories of a traumatic fight with her father. The hybrids dared not emphasize in her mind her relationship with her mother: they did not want to trigger any buried memories. Anastasia Dualla was thus, not coincidentally, made to be an only child. She was from Sagitarron, next to Gemenon the most religious of the Colonies. She herself did not believe.

Galen Tyrol was a physicist. But without prestigious degrees and a reputation among others in the field (which could not easily be fabricated, even by the Cylons), he could not teach. It was Galen Tyrol that the Cylons got most wrong, and it was this fundamental split between the man he was and the man he was to become that would be at the heart of so many of his problems, of so much of his anger. Standing on Gemenon, he looked up and knew that this place was among the stars. He enlisted in the military, where he would become a knuckledragger under the command of William Adama.

The hybrids watched for several more years. And then they erased all memory of the Five from their systems and prepared to unveil their own human bodies.

* * *

There were seven models.

The One was ruthlessly practical. He was a logician who believed that he made his own destiny. He was bitingly sarcastic and demanded the respect of his fellows.

The Two was empathic and deeply spiritual. When the Two first found the relics that had decades before been collected from the Apollo, he recognized in the book the scripture of his faith, and he taught its message to the others. But in truth, it was not so much the book as it was the small pad he found with it, filled with garbled notes and hastily-rendered sketches, that interested him the most. On its first page was written a word in heavy blocked script: _Starbuck_. And then under that, underlined with an excitement that had long ago split the page: _My name is Kara Thrace_.

The Three was selfish and cruel. She was willing to work toward her own ends, regardless of cost. She was also singularly shrewd. Both through subtle manipulation and outright threat, she kept an iron hand on the direction of the Cylon plan.

The Four was a scientist. It was his job to maintain the Resurrection Ships and the cloned bodies, to guarantee the viability of the lines. He was also tasked with finding a way for the Cylons to fulfill God's first commandment in the Garden: be fruitful and multiply. In this he failed.

The Five was a manager of people and systems. He was charged with troubleshooting the networks. He was an innovator but had little emotional attachment to the world around him. He did not care to think for himself.

The Six was designed for her appearance more than she was for her intellect. But she was also born with an emptiness which she longed to fill with strong emotion. Her desire for sustained connection was to be her downfall in each of the forms she would come to take.

The Eight was a warrior. She was also far better than the rest at blending in with humans. Aloud, the others claimed this was a sign of weakness. Quietly, the Twos and the Sixes longed to be more like her.

* * *

It was a Six, the seductress, that was chosen to go to Caprica to pave the way for the return. In the year the plans were complete, the Cylons finally sent a representative to the Armistice Station.

* * *

Nearly a thousand years before, as the five children of Earth had prepared themselves for their journey across space and time, Kara Thrace had sat in the cockpit of her Viper, preparing herself to take another journey. She studied the gun that rested in her lap. Squeezing her eyes shut, she said a prayer to the gods who had sent her here (their servant), to the father of her heart, to the boy who had loved her, and to the man she could not have. Neatly, she positioned the gun in her mouth, turned her eyes to the grey horizon, and squeezed the trigger.

And then she was flying, flying, flying through the blackness, and she loved it. How had she gotten here? She didn't quite know. She didn't remember launching from Galactica. Was she on rotation? But the feeling of flight was so vibrant, so perfect: she sunk into it, embraced it. And then – something – a flash before her eyes – Earth, blue, radiant. Oceans, forests. It was so distinct to her; where the images came from, though, a mystery.

A Viper in front of her, and she could tell from his style – it was Apollo. He saw her, gave chase. She nosed next to him.

"Hi, Lee."

He did a double-take, his eyes wide. "_Kara?_"

She grinned, an honest, true grin. "Don't freak out. It really is me." She paused, wanted to convey to him the weight of her words. "I've been to Earth. I know where it is. And I'm gonna take us there."

_fin_

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